


shikkotsu no sakura

by theformerone



Series: the ballad of the slug sage [6]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Canon-Typical Violence, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Haruno Sakura-centric, Humor, Multi, POV Multiple, Romance, Slug Sage Sakura, the slug fam is BACK and better than ever
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-03-07 17:37:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 90,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13439829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theformerone/pseuds/theformerone
Summary: Sakura made a promise to the slugs of Shikkotsu Forest. She will not fail them, not for anything.





	1. prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yugito is dying. And then she isn't.

She doesn't know where she is. She had been in Kumo. Had been fighting two bickering shinobi. Akatsuki. She remembers fighting. Exploding tags, smoke. Blood. Then silence.

Afterwards, agony. 

She was being cleaved in two. Matatabi was there, screaming. Digging her claws into her and filling her with sharp blue beast chakra. They loved each other. They wanted each other to survive. Yugito let go as Matatabi held on. The bijuu would survive this cleaving. Yugito would not. She would not force her friend to die with her. 

Yugito let go. 

They ripped her out of her. They put her into a stone demon. They left her there to die. 

She waits, on the edge of life and death, choosing life, chasing the ounce of it left in her. She crawls into the wilderness, somehow a survivor. Her stomach is a mess of blood and chakra, and seal work torn apart from her battle and left to fester as they tore her out of her. She cannot hold herself together. But she can crawl. And so she does. She can use one arm and both feet. She inches out from under the eye of the demon above her. She pulls herself into grass. 

Cats will hide themselves when they feel their ending. Yugito just wants to go home. 

She feels she must have been moving for many years. It has been minutes. Then there is a voice, and then a shadow, a hand against her cheek. She freezes, tries to fight as she is rolled onto her back. There is so much pain, it becomes non specific. She is not in agony. She is agony. 

Then green. Green hands, green eyes. Green smells. Wet leaves. Peaches. Then sleep. 

She wakes in a cocoon of softness pressing in at all sides. She does not crack open her eyes. She wiggles her fingers, then toes. Opens her mouth. Tastes only sweet things. She is not bleeding anymore. She feels small, like a child. She has not felt like a child for some time. 

She is alone in her mind. Matatabi is gone. It is too quiet. She cries. 

* * *

She wakes up under green eyes, under green hands. She is alive. 

She tries to ask who? "Emissary." She tries to ask why? "Emissary." She tries to ask how? "There was life still in you. It was too stubborn to go out." What did you do? "I encouraged it." Why? Why? "Because I made a promise." To who? "To her sister, and her sister's children." Whose? Whose sister? "Matatabi's."

The woman with green hands stays with her for days, coaching life back into her. 

Yugito doesn't know how long they travel. She had chased those shinobi, had cornered them, had  _trapped_ them away from the heart of Kumo. But had they taken her somewhere? They must have. After Matatabi was torn out of her (hissing, screaming, and bleeding, god above and below, Yugito had never known the cat inside of her could  _bleed_ ) she had crawled on grass and hard, cold earth. Had it been raining? She - she isn't sure. 

The woman with green hands feeds her water and broth when she can stomach it. Yugito isn't sure how she manages to make the food; they seem to be traveling all the time. But the woman props her up against her own body, and Yugito is grateful for the warmth, for the stability. She feels paper thin, as if she might blow away if someone so much as sighed in her direction. But the woman with green hands, the emissary - she is firm. 

She has pink hair, Yugito notices. And a purple flower on her forehead. Yugito does not know of any goddesses with pink hair or purple flowers, but she thinks if this girl is not Izanami for bringing her back to life, she must be a spirit of some kind. Yugito doesn't know what she's done to incur the favor of a spirit of such power, but she's grateful to whatever good deed she must have done in her past to warrant it. 

* * *

She feels Kumo before she sees it. Feels the way the barrier seal around the village buffets against her to welcome her back inside. Yugito tries to flare her chakra to identify herself, but her reserves feel like a scar with new skin stretched too thinly over it. It hurts. It  _hurts._

Izanami gives her a gentle squeeze. Yugito is strong enough to be held on her back now, and the goddess has her arms wrapped around her thighs. Yugito finds it funny that a deity would come down to earth and give herself the body of someone much smaller than herself. Izanami is the size of a young woman, no older than seventeen, but she has the strength of someone at least five times her age. 

"I'm sorry," the goddess says, "that I could not do more."

It is cold, so cold. That is how Yugito knows it is home. It is cold in the mountains, when the clouds brush against your hands, slip past your cheek. Izanami has carried her to the village gates, a plateau surrounded by large red walls at the base of the mountain on which Kumogakure rests. There are stairs beyond those gates, red stairs that will take Yugito up, up, up back into her home. 

Home. Yugito's chest hurts. Will they have searched for her? Did they miss her? Did they worry for her?

She thinks of Bee and his teachings when she was younger, and did not understand. She thinks of A, and his unwavering strength. She thinks of her genin team; Hie, Kikyo, and Ichigo. She wonders who's been teaching them while she's been gone.

"Your people will be able to take care of you," Izanami says.

Yugito's back is on the hard packed ground. Her head lolls, and she watches Izanami. There is a man behind her, many leagues behind her. He is a Hyūga. Yugito can tell.

"They're approaching," he says to Izanami.

Gods can wear whatever forms they desire. Yugito wonders if this is Izanagi, or Raijin. There are few others who followed Izanami and her orders faithfully. 

"I know," the goddess says. 

She takes Yugito's hand in hers and gives it a gentle squeeze. There are guards, she notices belatedly. The sentries who are posted at the village gates. She didn't feel them, hadn't been able to sense them. But she can hear their footfalls, can hear it when they demand that Izanami let go of her, to state her business. 

Yugito wants to shout at them to show their respect. Here is Raijin, their patron, without him they are only clouds bearing neither lightning nor rain. And here is Izanami, who gave them all life and who can eat them in the space between one blink and the next. 

But Yugito does not have her strength, and so she is silent. 

"Listen to me, cousin," Izanami says, squeezing her hand. 

Izanami called her cousin; how funny. Perhaps it was Izanagi who ought to call her his child. They were sister-wife and brother-husband; Yugito was both Izanami's niece and her daughter. 

"Stay in Kumogakure," the goddess says quickly. "Do not leave for anything. Tell your brother to ask Gyūki about Saiken's little brother. That is how they will find me again. I will need their help to save us all."

Yugito blinks, and everything feels slow. Izanami is staring down at her, green eyes blazing with purpose. Yugito forces herself to remember. Ask her brother about Gyūki's Saiken. Saiken's little brother. Ask Gyūki. Her brother. Yugito didn't have any  brothers. She had been an only child. Her mother had been one fourth Uzumaki. Her parents had born three children before Yugito; she was their second daughter. All of her siblings had died when Matatabi had been forced into them. Yugito hadn't. 

She opens her mouth to say this, but Izanami is still speaking. 

"I'm sorry I couldn't save her, too," she says. Yugito had never seen a goddess cry. "But I will release her. And she'll be safe once I do."

"We need to move," Raijin says. "Now!"

The sentries are upon them then, but Izanami is swift. She has already let go of Yugito's hand. In half a breath, she is by Raijin's side, and then the two of them are gone. 

Yugito sees a wall of grey cloth and blonde hair and thinks - Samui. Then on either sides of her face are a pair of brown palms, and she's looking up into Karui's bronze eyes. 

"Name, age, and rank," she says, voice hard. 

Yugito tries to open her mouth to form the words, but finds that nothing will come out. These  _fools_ just ran Izanami herself away from Kumogakure. How could they?

"Name, age, and rank, Yugito!" Karui barks. 

Yugito licks her lips. Samui and Karui aren't the only ones there. At least three squads of ANBU have touched down near her, creating a perimeter around her prone form. Some are shouting orders to pursue Izanami and Raijin. Yugito wants to scream at them. 

"Nii Yugito," she says, finally. "Twenty-nine. Jounin. Identity number C-L-five-three-two-two."

Something in Karui seems to soften at that. A squad of the assembled ANBU disappear into the wilderness after the goddess and her god. Yugito can still feel her scream bubbling at the base of her throat. 

"Oi!" Karui shouts. "Get us a stretcher! We've got one wounded!"

Someone brings the stretcher. Karui eases her onto it. Samui watches. Yugito leaves her eyes on the pale blue sky over her head and prays to the goddess for forgiveness. She prays that Raijin will be merciful to those who attack his mother, or that Izanagi will only maim those who try to strike his sister-wife. She prays Izanami does not bring death down onto Yugito's fellow shinobi. 

But Izanami is a goddess who wields creation in one hand and death in the other. It would be equal if she saved Yugito's life and took the life of those pursuing her. 

Yugito prays that she leaves the world imbalanced as it is.

* * *

They take her to the hospital. She sleeps for thirty-six hours. 

When she wakes, they tell her that she has survived the impossible. Matatabi has been completely removed from her body; there are no traces of the bijuu's chakra left inside of her. Yugito looks down at the gnarled skin where her seal used to be and she does not weep. Not until she is safe, tucked away, where no one can hear her wail. 

"You are in perfect health," a doctor says to her, chart firm in his hands. "That is a miracle in and of itself."

Yugito sits in her hospital bed, hair loose around her shoulders. Her clothes are in a tidy pile beside her bed; her hitai-ate is on top of the pile. The hospital gown she wears is white and it chafes. She does not feel at home in her own skin. Matatabi is not there beside her.

"Unfortunately - ,"

Yugito's world has already coalesced into silence. She looks at the doctor. She has survived the impossible. She can handle whatever it is he has to say. 

"Your chakra coils could not be preserved."

And that just seems - cruel. 

Matatabi had been torn out of her through every tenketsu on her body. The result had been a magnificent blowout of each tenketsu, of her chakra coils themselves. She was supposed to have had fourth degree chakra burns all over her body, if whoever had healed her had not done so. The scar on her stomach, the wound she had taken from that strange black-and-white skinned shinobi who called upon a god called Jashin, it suddenly aches. 

He tells her that she will never be an active duty shinobi again. That her reserves are that of a civilian child now, and it's possible that they'll never expand to where they would have been even if she had never been a jinchuuriki. He credits her Uzumaki blood for even that much. 

If she takes her rehabilitation slowly (rehabilitation she only gets because she is privileged, because of her sacrifices, of her lifetime of loyalty, of her three dead siblings) she may be able to perform D-rank jutsu by the end of the year. 

Yugito feels hollow. She has been a shinobi all her life. She has never considered life outside of this line of work. It occurs to her, in the blasphemous part of her mind, that she should curse Izanami for letting her live. Yugito squashes the thought as soon as it arrives. If Izanami let her live, it must be because she still has a purpose on this earth. And - it may be hard to see now, but it's there. She just has to be patient. 

Yugito can be patient.

* * *

Interrogation Corps comes one hour after her doctor leaves. 

They send Samui, which is a small comfort. She is a steely woman, a dangerous woman; she's someone that Yugito would trust not only in front of her but behind her as well. 

"Walk me through it," Samui says. 

"Akatsuki," Yugito begins. "One with purple hair and a medallion, a triangle inside of a circle. He had a three bladed scythe. The other wore a full cowl, but his eyes were green and lacked pupils. He had stitches on his face." 

She breathes. Compartmentalizes. She explains. 

Samui listens through the story, eyes narrowed as Yugito walks her through it. Yugito knows that there are at least three ANBU assigned to her room, and that at least one of them is memorizing every word that she says as she says it. 

"How did you get back?" Samui asks. 

Yugito falters. 

"Someone, a woman," she says. "She brought me back."

"Why?"

Samui crosses one leg on top of the other, arms still folded. They're the same age. Sometimes, Yugito wonders why exactly Samui wasn't the one to have Matatabi sealed inside of her. One eighth Uzumaki or not, Samui was just as capable, if not more so, of housing a bijuu. 

Yugito shakes her head. "I don't know."

Samui doesn't believe her. She's right not to. 

"Did she say anything?"

Yugito licks her lips. Samui pours her a cup of water from the pitcher at the bedside table. Yugito takes it and holds it between her hands. 

"She called herself an emissary," she begins. "She said she saved my life because she made a promise."

"A promise to whom?"

Yugito takes a sip of water to have a moment before she answers. 

"She told you something," Samui says instead of waiting for her. "It sounded like gibberish. 'Ask Gyūki about Saiken's little brother'. And she told you to stay in Kumo." 

Yugito nods. She's abruptly aware of Izanami - or, the emissary's request of her. She isn't sure of how to do that. She'll be under observation for a while before she can get to Bee, and she doesn't have Matatabi inside of her anymore to get a direct link to Gyūki in Bee's mind. 

"She might have done this to you on purpose," Samui says, voice light.

Yugito doesn't grind her teeth. She doesn't flinch. She doesn't even hold her breath. She's been a shinobi since the age of two. Since she could toddle. She gives nothing away. 

"Why would she save my life after the extraction only to heal me into a glorified civilian?"

It goes unsaid. The woman, whoever she was, could have killed Yugito if she had wanted to. She was useless now, as a soldier for her village. It could have been a power play, returning a discarded jinchuuriki back to their village. Nobody outside of a full blooded Uzumaki could survive such impossible odds; Yugito was one in a million. 

But if the woman had been an enemy of Kumo, she wouldn't have sent her back at all. She would have let her die in the wilderness. 

"Do you know how long you've been gone?" Samui asks. 

Yugito shakes her head, but she knows it's been days. 

"You've been missing for ten days."

A little over a week. That couldn't possibly be right. Yugito had been crawling for days, she remembers. And she had waken up and fallen back asleep so often when she had been with the emissary; it had to have been closer to a month. Not ten days. 

"We had nine ANBU search and rescue parties combing Kumo for you."

Yugito's grip on her cup gets a little tighter.

"What we're all dying to know," Samui says, still poised, not moving a muscle, "is how this woman found you when none of our best trackers could."

Divine intervention? Perhaps. Yugito locks her jaw and stares Samui in the face. 

"I don't know," she says plainly. "I couldn't tell you."

Samui believes her because not too long after that she leaves. She doesn't press about the promise the woman made to Matatabi's sister, and her sister's children but Yugito knows that the ANBU heard her lack of an answer. Someone will be back to question her soon. A is too smart, to paranoid to let something like that (something like _her_ ) fester in his village walls. 

She'll be monitored for days, for longer perhaps, after she leaves the hospital. Yugito takes a deep breath and deals with it. She can be patient. 

She's tugged her hair over her shoulder, is working it into a braid when someone clears their throat at the doorway. 

Yugito feels so off-guard. Along with her chakra and her ability to mold it had gone her ability to sense it. And she's grateful to have her life but she wonders what Izanami could possibly have in store for a girl like her. A girl who shouldn't really be alive. 

But when Yugito looks to the door, her heart swells in her chest. 

Hie is there, with his dark skin and bright orange eyes and spiky red hair. His fist is clutched around a Get-Well-Soon card. Ichigo is clutching a small vase of marigolds, pushing her long black bangs out of her red-brown eyes so she can see inside. Kikyo is leading them, her own white hair pulled into two braids behind her, brown lower lip wobbling as she enters and sees her sensei. 

Yugito hadn't thought they'd let her genin team come to see her. 

They're dressed in their civilian clothing, meaning A had put them on lockdown in case the person who came for Yugito came for her team as well. Yugito's parents were long dead, and the only people alive that she gave more than a rat's ass about were the three genin in front of her. 

Kikyo is on the verge of tears, and when Yugito waves them into the room, she nearly starts bawling. Ichigo carefully places the marigolds on her bedside table, and Hie puts the card down beside it. 

They're a little awkward, a little distant, as if they're afraid to touch her. Like she might break or disappear again if they get too close. 

But Yugito did not crawl out from underneath the eye of death to see her students (her kits, Matatabi had called them) cower before her. They can't all sit on the bed even though they all clearly want to, but they do crowd around her. Yugito runs her fingers through Hie's hair, she taps at a smudge on Ichigo's glasses, and pulls Kikyo in tight when the first tears spill over her soft cheeks. 

"They told us you couldn't be our sensei anymore," Hie says after some time in silence. 

Yugito nods. Ichigo worries a marigold petal between her fingertips. Kikyo is looking at the ground. 

"Probably not," Yugito says. "But you three are close enough to chuunin anyway that you wouldn't need much more of my training."

Ichigo looks absolutely horrified at the thought. Kikyo looks pleased, but the warmth on her face cracks in the next moment. 

"If you make a case," she continues, "to the Raikage that I could oversee your training with a supplementary sensei, I might be able to stay on the team."

Ichigo perks up at that, pushing her glasses high up on her nose. 

"You'll need someone who can sense chakra better than I can, which will be nearly anyone at this point," Yugito says. "If your case is strong enough, Yondaime-sama might grant it."

She knows the ANBU outside will notify A of this proposed request. Knows that the idea alone of a civilian training a genin team is laughable. But the fierce hope in Ichigo's eyes is enough to make Yugito promise what could never be done. 

Her genin team stays in her room until visiting hours end, working out their plan of attack. Yugito says goodbye to them, and each promises to come back day after day until she is released. 

* * *

When she is sleeping, a shadow passes over her face. She has been training too long not to wake up when a person so boldly announces their presence. 

Yugito is a shinobi of the highest caliber. If she wanted to (and she does, she desperately does) she could be a taijutsu specialist only, could hone her kenjutsu until she was just as awe inspiring with Matatabi as she was without her. 

She's got a kunai aimed at the throat of her intruder when she realizes who it is. 

"You put the whole village in a tizzy, little lady, gettin' snatched up for ten days by somebody shady."

She drops the knife. Bee catches it. He twirls it, then puts it back into her empty hand. 

"Big man Gyūki says you shouldn't be alive, so what's the word, Yugito, how did you survive?"

She pulls herself up into sitting, places the kunai on the table by the marigolds. 

"A woman," she explains for what feels like the first and yet the hundredth time. "A woman who calls herself an emissary. I don't know to where, or for who."

Bee rubs at his chin. Yugito wonders if he got in through the window. 

"Akatsuki took me," she says, "but the emissary brought me back. I thought she was Izanami."

She feels foolish even as she says it, but if she can't say something as silly as that to Bee, who can she say it to?

"She told me to find my brother, and tell him to ask Gyūki about Saiken's little brother," Yugito says. "But I don't have a brother. You're the Hachibi's jinchuuriki, but we aren't blood."

Bee folds his arms and looks at her like she's said something absurdly foolish. 

"Blood isn't what makes a sibling a sibling. You should know by now that family is a feeling."

Yugito thinks of Hie's tangle of red hair. How Ichigo hasn't saved up enough money yet from meager D-ranks to get a new pair of glasses with a better fit. Kikyo, their fearless leader. 

Yugito's parents were a memory that was not fond. She only remembered the old priests and priestesses. They had taken care of her after Matatabi was stored inside of her. She wonders if they will take care of her now, if she can make good use of herself protecting the temple where she was raised. The priests, the priestesses, they had been her teachers. The Raikage had entrusted them with Yugito's education, and they had not failed. But many of them could not use chakra; she feels better as she thinks of this, this home of hers that she had only just thought of as home again. 

"Saiken is the six tails to Gyūki's eight," Bee says, "but there ain't no twelve tails from what he relates."

Yugito furrows her brows. There are nine tailed beasts. Of course there was no twelve tails. 

"Could 'Saiken's little brother' refer to the Sanbi or the Ichibi?" she asks. 

Bee shrugs and shuts his eyes behind his black sunglasses. 

"All the tailed beasts are as old as one another," Bee murmurs, "no such thing as a big or little brother."

Yugito fists her bedsheets in her hands. 

"She said that's how you would find her," Yugito says. "I don't know what else to say."

Bee tilts his head at her and rubs at his chin again. Yugito presses her hands to her temples and thinks. 

"When I was still in and out, she told me she healed me because she made a promise to Matatabi's sister, and her sister's children," she says, looking back up at Bee. "Do you know what that means?"

Bee shakes his head. They lapse into silence as each of them tries to work through the puzzle that the emissary has left them. 

"She had pink hair and a purple flower on her head," Yugito says after a while. "It might have been a seal, but there were four of them. Like the Godaime Hokage's seal."

Bee's eyebrows lift almost comically. 

"Four Byakugō's? That's no joke, bro."

"It's what I remember."

It had been hard, giving up that description of the emissary-slash-Izanami to Samui. She hoped the woman was far out of Lightning Country by now, and safe at that. Recognizing Raijin's form as a Hyūga had only made Yugito feel twice as guilty describing him to Samui. He hadn't picked the best body to create for himself in Kumo. Not even a little bit. 

"Tsunade can summon great slugs in battle," Bee begins. "Saiken is a slug, do you think that matters?"

Yugito bites the inside of her cheek. She and Matatabi had been close because of Yugito's upbringing. Her education at the temple ensured her that she knew how the natural world worked, how chakra flowed through every living thing, and which gods or goddesses she had to thank for it. Matatabi had corrected her every once in a while about who to thank for what. She had told her that a being called Kurama had mothered the kitsune, and that she herself had given the bakeneko to the world. 

She had never thought to ask about Matatabi's siblings. After twenty-seven years of having the creature living inside of her, she had just assumed that even though the bijuu was one of nine, the others weren't her siblings. 

Yugito's hand drifts over the scar on her stomach, and she wishes that she had thought to ask. That she had bothered. That she had cared. 

"Maybe," Yugito says softly. 

Bee nods brusquely and takes a step away from her bed. 

"I'll ask Gyūki to give Saiken a call. When I have more info, I'll tell you it all."

Yugito nods. She feels grateful, to have someone like Bee at her side. It's possible that A will turn her out, or won't even allow her to return to the temple where she was trained. It's possible that she'll just - have to learn a trade and live out her days in the civilian quarter. Bee would probably sooner whisk her away to some strange place with turtles as big as her skull. It was nice to have someone like him who respected her, someone who thought she was worthy. 

He was right; family was a feeling. 

He leaves after that, and Yugito is left alone again in the dark. She goes back to sleep. 

Neither she, nor the doctors notice the seal inked in pale white slime and blood on the heel of her left foot. It is an intricate thing, delicate, and hidden to the eyes of those who do not need to know it is there, or do not need to use it. 

Yugito dreams of a forest that is full of color at night. She dreams of trees that block out the sky. She dreams of fat purple fruits and her bare feet beneath the grass. She dreams of ghosts, pale yellow spirits bouncing against her shoulders. She dreams of a valley and of purple flowers that all point in the same direction. She dreams of a stone pool, and one thousand eyes watching her. She mouths the name of this wondrous place behind her eyes in her sleep.

Yugito breathes, " _Shikkotsu._ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are food for starving artists
> 
> thank you for reading xx


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They'd have to leave Hot Springs Country soon, if they weren't careful.

"That," Neji says once they get back to their inn in Yuga, "was an extraordinarily bad idea."

Sakura looks at him like _he's_ the one who had gotten a prophetic dream from _a slug_ that told them to haul ass to the Shimo-Kumo border because  _his_ spirit-cousin was about to get assassinated. 

"It's all part of the plan," she says, blithely stretching her arms over her head. 

Neji snorts, putting his hand on the sound muffling seal they put on their door. Tenten had loaded them down with all sorts of portable, handy seals before they had left. She had raised her eyebrows suggestively when she gave him the sound muffling ones. He snapped the rubber band that held one of her buns in place in half. She laughed at him, and told him that barrier seals couldn't function as condoms. Neji took the seals and walked away.

Tenten kept calling him lover-boy. She was the worst. 

"We're in Yuga to find Utakata," Neji presses, taking his shoes off. Sakura removes her own, cracks her knuckles, and then sits down on the couch.

On the low table in front of her is a map of the elemental countries. They had been consulting it for the last several days, wondering where exactly they should go if they weren't able to find Utakata in Yuga. Sakura's dream in Shikkotsu had happened over a year ago, and while the link between Onyomi-Saiken-the rest of the bijuu was strong enough to wake her up from a dead sleep (and Neji, too, for that matter) it was a different story altogether when Sakura was outside of Shikkotsu. 

The way Shigeo had explained it, was that she had only been able to see all the jinchuuriki because she was in Shikkotsu, and had been dancing in Onyomi's slime for weeks at a time. Now, the connection was much more distant. It flared up when others were in danger, but when they were safe, it petered out into nothing. 

Neji had been wholly unsurprised that this, of all things, was their biggest inconvenience. What good was a telepathic link between astronomically powerful beings made of chakra unless the damn thing had  _bad reception_?

"And we will find Utakata," Sakura says, running her fingers over the edges of the map. "He's a wanderer, but even missing nin have patterns. Just because he's not in the village doesn't mean he's not somewhere in Hot Springs Country."

Neji sits down beside her and looks out over the map. She's right. Utakata could have gone anywhere between now and the first time Sakura had seen him in her vision. But people were creatures of habit. It was possible that even if he wasn't in Yuga, he could be nearby. Oto was out of the question considering Orochimaru's early affiliations with Akatsuki. Iwa or Taki would make sense, and so did Kusa. But traveling the world was quick work for an especially clever shinobi. Utakata could be in Suna for all they knew, and he could be in Kumo by the time Neji and Sakura made it to Wind Country. 

"Are you hungry?" he asks instead. 

Sakura's dream had woken them up late at night days ago, and they had run like hell to the Shimo-Kumo border to find Nii Yugito covered in blood and grime, stubbornly refusing to die. Sakura had wanted to activate her sage mode to find her, but she would've turned herself into a beacon and any sensor worth their salt would've seen her coming. Neji used his Byakugan instead, and they found the body just as quickly, even if Sakura chewed the skin around her fingernails until they got there. 

There had been little time to stop for rest or provisions. Sakura had wanted to run all night and all day if it meant getting Yugito to safety. He had to be the one to remind her that Yugito needed to eat something, and that Sakura needed to rest through her initial healing of her spirit-cousin (and god, that phrase made Neji want to roll his eyes into the back of his head), and of the summonings that had happened afterward. 

Katsuyu had taken everything in stride, as if Tsunade had asked much wilder requests of them than healing a Kumo nin lost in the borderlands. They had swallowed Yugito and finished the healing when Sakura used up too much of her chakra. Neji had to grab her wrist and stop her from using her senjutsu chakra to finish the job; she had only ever used her senjutsu chakra to heal herself, and she had the chakra of her summons in her reserves. There was no telling what that kind of energy would do to someone who had only just recently had a bijuu ripped out of their body. And besides, her strength was directly correlated with Katsuyu's. If she got too weak, the slug wouldn't be able to do anything for Yugito. 

Sakura hated logic when it got in the way of her doing what she thought was right. 

Getting to the Kumo gates and then out of Lightning Country had been appropriately heart stopping. Kumo shinobi were boogeymen for Hyūga children. What had happened to Hinata when they were young could have happened to any of them. And now that his Caged Bird Seal was gone, it was possible that his Byakugan could fall into their hands. 

Neji had been straight backed and tense the whole way in and out of Lightning Country. Sakura had been just as wired; she wasn't a Konoha shinobi anymore, but it was possible that she'd be treated like an enemy for having Yugito's body on hand. 

They had played evasion tactics, had slipped into Frost Country, then skipped into Sound to cover their tracks before returning back to Yuga. The journey to Kumo and back again had put them two weeks behind schedule. 

Neji wasn't sure how he was going to write his report to Tsunade on this pseudo-disaster. 

"I'm  _ravenous_ ," Sakura says, placing her hands on her stomach. "You?"

Neji nods solemnly. 

"I've been waiting to eat more than broth and ration bars since we circled back." 

Sakura pats his shoulder reassuringly, but her face does seem a little sad. 

"Sorry about that," she says, waving her other hand, "all of it. I didn't expect that would happen."

Neji shrugs his shoulder. "How could you have?"

"I know," Sakura presses. "But it's still - inconvenient."

Neji raises an eyebrow. 

"Yes. How very inconvenient for me, the person who volunteered to watch your back for a year. Who left his village behind to make sure you didn't die. Who -,"

Sakura's grabbed one of the throw pillows on the couch and is shoving it in his face. Neji doesn't stop talking. 

"Who left his family to guard you with his life. Who could be groomed to be his clan's heir at this very moment if he hadn't followed you into oblivion." 

"I get it, I get it,  _stop talking."_

He pulls the pillow off his face and looks at Sakura. 

"I'm here to make sure you don't get killed so the Godaime doesn't kill me," he says. "I'll follow you wherever you go. I'm being paid to."

She punches him in the gut for that, and it only hurts a little. Which is a love tap by Sakura's standards. 

"Let's go get soba," Neji says. 

Sakura rolls up the map on the table and gives him a shy little grin. 

"You're buying," he adds. 

She punches him again.

* * *

She had woken up in a cold sweat, clawing at her stomach for a wound that wasn't there. 

Suspended between sleeping and waking, Onyomi had murmured a name. Had showed her where Matatabi had last seen the world outside Yugito's body. Had given her one instruction:

_Run._

Her heart had been thundering in her chest. She could feel it. Could feel the wound on her stomach that was Yugito's, could feel the mind numbing agony that came with being stabbed and having the weapon in you twist and yank and pull. 

There had been tears in her eyes, for this pain that wasn't her pain. She hadn't noticed them in her haze. Onyomi's thoughts were Saiken's thoughts were Matatabi's thoughts were Yugito's thoughts were screaming in Sakura's mind to heal, fix, protect. She wondered how the jinchuuriki tolerated it, this link between their minds. The bijuu themselves must have filtered it, or it must have been muffled with their seals, because Sakura couldn't separate her mind from the four baying for attention in her ears. 

Neji hadn't asked her many questions when she got out of bed and started throwing her clothes on. They had only been in Yuga for about five days, and hadn't made great strides in finding Utakata. They were supposed to go out that morning, see if they could ask any village children of a man who made bubbles with a pipe. 

Yugito's brush with death put them behind schedule. 

Sakura had run like a madwoman, breath heaving heard in her chest as she forced her legs forward. She had realized on the run that she didn't have enough information on Akatsuki besides their name, and a couple of the names of their members. She didn't know where their base was either. And if she didn't know that, there was no way she could effectively counteract their attacks. 

If they could extract a bijuu in the middle of the wild… Sakura didn't want to think about the implications of that. They had to be immediately re-sealing the bijuu once they were released, but in what or in whom, Sakura couldn't say. She knew about that terrible statue from her vision in Shikkotsu, but it couldn't be possible that such a massive thing could pop up in Frost Country and then disappear at will.

Yugito couldn't have crawled across the world with the wound that she had. Akatsuki either had a moving base or they operated as individual units getting orders from a single leader, which freed them up to travel separately. 

She needed a Bingo Book desperately. She hadn't thought to get one while she was still in Konoha; but they weren't exactly widely distributed literature. They were for jounin or ANBU. Sakura ranked a solid chuunin, and despite her massive power up she still needed at least another year's worth of training on how to  _use_ it before she could jump another rank.

If she were still a part of a Hidden Village, she'd like to have been a tokubetsu jounin, specialized in the Shikkotsu style of fighting, which was plastering several slugs on your arms and hoping one of their talents would help you not get murdered. 

Neji had a Bingo Book, but it hadn't occurred to Sakura to think about it until she was racing through Frost Country to find Yugito's body. It hadn't been until she had her cousin in her arms that her panic response eddied into the clinical calm that came over her when she had to assess damage for healing. 

She hadn't wanted to bring Yugito back to Kumo. But she knew that dragging the woman back to Yuga was out of the question. She was twelve years older than Sakura, and even in her weakened state once she woke up she'd put up a fight. 

She had settled on the seal that Onyomi-Saiken had showed her. There was one on the bottom of Utakata's foot, on the bottom of Han, and Rōshi's as well. The one on Yugito's foot would have been stronger if the other three bijuu had been there, but Sakura used her own blood, some of Yugito's, and some of Katsuyu's slime. It would be enough to drag the two of them together if they ever needed it. 

Utakata could bounce between Rōshi and Han because both of them had given a little blood for the seal. Sakura balked at the idea of anyone outside of the jinchuuriki knowing about the seals. She's grateful that the slime renders them invisible to anyone who isn't tied to Shikkotsu by bijuu or blood. Tsunade would be able to see them, if she ever had to. Tenten and Ino could as well, once they got their contracts in the forest. 

Yugara, the corrupted Mizukage and jinchuuriki for Isobu. He could as well. 

Sakura is aware that if he's able to capture any of them, if Akatsuki catches one of them, she or Yugito, or Utakata or Han or Rōshi, it will be over. Catching one of them will be as good as catching four jinchuuriki. She resolves to stay away from Kiri for as long as she can. She'll need Utakata's expertise on his former village if she's gonna have any chance at freeing their cousin. 

The seal itches on the bottom of her left foot at the thought. 

The plan was find Utakata, then find Han and Rōshi. After that, they could figure out how to get to the other bijuu. Making sure all of them were sealed and had a failsafe escape from Akatsuki was the easy part. The seal would drag them to the closest bijuu, which would hopefully take them out of danger. They had four out of nine, which were decent odds all things considered. 

After they got the seals on every wandering bijuu, Isobu was next. He was the biggest danger to them. Sakura hadn't devised a battle strategy yet, but it definitely involved keeping at least one of the jinchuuriki on the opposite side of the elemental nations, far away from Kiri. Gaara in Suna had seemed like the safest bet, but Sakura wasn't all too sure how he'd feel about having a tracking seal on him now that he was Kazekage. 

Breaking into several hidden villages to find jinchuuriki was also difficult enough. But for some reason, Sakura wasn't overly concerned. Yugito had access to the other Kumo jinchuuriki, and once she proved herself trustworthy, Sakura would probably get access to them, too. That was another one. 

Gaara was easy. He and Konoha were allies, and what was more, he trusted whoever Naruto trusted. Sakura was as good as in. There was two. 

Sakura hadn't seen Naruto in three years, but their genin days after Sasuke had left had made them thick as thieves before he left. He would trust her. He'd probably be the one who convinced Gaara to get the seal. That was three. 

That left Yugara, and one unaccounted for jinchuuriki. The Taki jinchuuriki, the girl with green hair who used chakra wings to fly. Chōmei's host. As far as Sakura knew, she was still a shinobi of her village, and had no reason to leave or trust Sakura except for whatever Chōmei said, and  _that_ was only if she had reached a kind of symbiotic relationship with the great beetle that gave her a measure of access into the bijuu link. 

"If you keep thinking your noodles will get cold," Neji says. 

Sakura snorts and pushes her shoulder against his. 

Yuga wasn't really a hidden village anymore considering it had scaled back its shinobi and ramped up on its tourism industry. She and Neji hardly had to walk far from their inn to find a decent place to eat. 

"Eat your fish corpse, dear," she snipes, sticking a piece of tempura shrimp in her mouth. 

Sakura had brought herring like the one in Neji's bowl back to life when she was still under Tsunade's tutelage. It ensured that she couldn't stomach fish without thinking too hard about it now that she was past that point. 

"Of course, dear," Neji replies. 

Hot Springs country ran south towards the border of what used to be the waters of Whirlpool Country. She doubted Utakata would have any reason to go that way, mostly because it put him right up close to waters in Mist territory. So it had to be further north towards Yuga, or along the border of Fire Country. Venturing into Kyoushu was a thought; the Land of Assassins would provide contracts to any mercenary who wandered through the lands. It was an easy way to make quick money if fixing houses and healing the sick as you traveled didn't work out. 

Sakura had Neji's budget for a year of travel not to mention her own life savings. That year of working solely at the hospital and the missions she had racked up before leaving for Shikkotsu would keep her comfortable for a long while. And if she ever wanted for something, she could always help out at a local hospital or scare off some bandits for a sleepy town. 

"You didn't pay for that shrimp," she says blithely, as Neji's chopsticks dip into her bowl. 

"It looked very lonely," he replies, "without you eating it."

You wouldn't know it by looking at him, but Neji was a world class nag. 

It had taken her a little time to understand the way he showed affection. He was stiff until you knew him, and even then he was still a little unapproachable. But Neji was on a team with Lee and Gai. No one could survive that combination without a good sense of humor. Kakashi probably would have died without one. 

Swiping her food was his way of telling her to eat. So Sakura ate. 

"We'll find your brother," he says, just a little bit too loud for her ears alone. "It'll take time, but you don't have to worry. Once he sees you, and you tell him what's happening to your family's farm, he'll come home with you right away."

Sakura does her best not to snicker into her soba. Yuga had only given up the shinobi way in recent memory, but once they had, merchants had flooded Hot Springs Country to set up shop. Shopkeepers could be stingy with information in hidden villages; they were like shinobi, the way they handled and dealt in information. 

But any civilian overhearing a sob story? Sakura was fifteen but she had pink hair and big green eyes. She wasn't famous enough for her hair to announce who she was and which village she was associated with, and that was a small blessing. She used some light concealer to hide her Byakugō, which by now was the same pale violet as the senjutsu chakra she had stored in her bones. 

All in all, she looked  _exactly_ like someone who's brother ran away from the family farm to Hot Springs Country.

"I hope so, shinobi-san," she says, poking at her food and feigning despondency.  "My lord - I mean, my father, he's unhappy that nii-san ran away, but I know he'll be happy once we bring him home."

Or a minor princess trying to bring home her wayward brother. Pink hair was much too conspicuous for anything less than that. Besides, princesses got free food. Sad farm girls didn't.

"It's just so hard," she continues, cracking her voice the barest bit, "to keep up hope."

"Suseri-san," Neji says, and oh man, Sakura has to try not to snort into her noodles, "it'll be alright. Please, finish your meal, and we can retire back to the inn." 

A Hyūga wouldn't get sent out on a solo mission to find some minor prince if the boy weren't important. Sakura can almost feel the moment several pairs of eyes begin to glance over her in her plain, but jewel colored clothes, and Neji's pristine, obviously shinobi attire.

Hook. 

"Excuse me miss," a middle aged man says. He approaches them on Sakura's side because Neji is obviously the more imposing of the two. It's at once a clever and fatal move.

"I couldn't help but overhearing. You said you're looking for your brother?"

Line.

Sakura wipes a nonexistent tear from her eye, and watches the older man soften. He's dressed well, doesn't look like he needs any compensation for the information, but that could change in a moment.

"Yes!" Sakura says hurriedly. "He's got brown hair, and eyes like yellow honey. He was wearing a kimono the last time I saw him. Pale blue with an orange sash, and there were three bubbles in orange stitched on the back of the kimono. Have you seen him? His name is -,"

"Suseri-san, please," Neji interrupts. Just in time. Names were dangerous. Nobody needed to know that they were looking for a jinchuuriki. At least not yet. "You cannot always put your faith in strangers."

The man puts his hands up in a show of kindness.

"I'm no threat," he says. "I've got kids of my own, and I'd be shaken up if one of them disappeared."

He looks to Sakura with sympathy in his gaze and says, "Your father should be out here looking for him, not you, young miss."

Sakura looks back into her noodles, then to Neji. 

"You're right, shinobi-san. Of course." She looks back up at the man and offers him a watery smile. "I'm sorry to trouble you, sir. Please pardon the imposition."

"It's no trouble!" he rushes to say at the sight of a teenage girl on the verge of tears. "A lot of travelers come through Yugakure. Lots of important people looking for vacations. It wouldn't surprise me that your brother would come here."

Sakura puts her hands on the table, and switches her look from tragic to hopeful in a second. 

"Does that mean you've seen him?" she asks. 

"Suseri-san," Neji says. "Why don't I speak with this stranger while you finish your meal?" 

Sakura looks back at Neji with her mouth open like she wants to protest, then shuts it when she sees the look on his face. They would've been a vicious team on intel missions. They're  _good_ at this. 

"Of course, shinobi-san," Sakura murmurs. She looks back at the man, with her most guileless expression. "Please, sir, tell him everything you know. My brother is very dear to me and my lord father will not rest until his son has returned."

There's a flicker of something like greed in the man's eyes, and Sakura knows she has him cornered. A young, kind of stupid princess telling the world that she was a princess was bloody bait few sharks could resist swimming towards. 

"I'd be happy to help you, young miss," the man says. 

Neji gets up, and waves him outside of the restaurant. Sakura finishes her noodles, trying to hide the smirk that's curling over her lips. When she presses a little bit of chakra into her ear, she can hear 'young man' and 'bubbles' and 'passed through here not too long ago'. Anyone who passed through a resort country dressed as Utakata did was bound to draw attention, especially if he made friends with the local children with his bubble blowing prowess. If she were like Kakashi, she would be able to hear the sound of Neji producing a wad of bills from his sleeve to tempt the man. 

She doesn't need Kakashi's hearing to catch it when the man reveals the name of the inn where Utakata had stayed at the last time he was spotted in Yuga proper.

And sinker. 

She smiles at her waiter, and because Yuga is a tourist trap these days, she leaves a couple of coins for a tip. A handsome tip, all things considered. Might as well play the part well.

When she rises and goes outside, the man is thanking Neji for his handsome reward before wishing Suseri-san the best and good luck with finding her brother.

"He stayed at an inn run by a woman called Masumi," he says. "It's some distance further north, but it won't be a long journey."

He's staying landlocked and away from Kiri waters. Sakura nods; that makes perfect sense. 

"We can leave whenever you are prepared, shinobi-san," Sakura says. 

"Of course, Suseri-san." 

Just small enough to make a ripple, that was all a shinobi had to do to get what they wanted. Suseri-san would not be easily forgotten because of her pink hair, and neither would the nameless shinobi who accompanied her because of his Hyūga eyes. But Yuga was not a hidden village, and peculiar characters wondered in and out of the village proper every day. 

By the end of the week, Suseri and her nameless shinobi would be old news. 

* * *

He materializes out of the floor, the top of his trap opening so that his black and white face can be seen. 

"Zetsu," his leader says. "You have something to report."

"I do," he replies. 

Pein looks at him from behind his smooth, brown desk. His fingers are steepled, dark nail polish glinting in the low light. Konan is folding a paper crane. Zetsu can feel the steady hum of her chakra as she feeds tiny pulses into the paper. He wonders where this one will go, and whose lives it will spy on. 

"Nii Yugito survived the extraction."

Konan's paper folding pauses for a moment, then continues. 

"That is impossible," Pein replies. 

"Not as impossible as we once thought." 

Pein leans back in his chair. Konan finishes her crane and starts on a paper boat. 

"If Nii Yugito did survive, there is a chance she will be able to give full descriptions of Hidan and Kakuzu to her village," Pein says. "This will give us undue attention."

Hidan and Kakuzu  _existing_ was enough to draw attention to the two of them, not to mention Akatsuki. 

"Pull them off of rotation," Pein says to Konan. "I want someone else after the four tails."

Konan folds a paper turtle. She nods. Pein looks back at Zetsu. 

"Who healed Nii Yugito?"

Zetsu shakes his head. He hadn't gotten that far. 

Pein being able to summon the Gedo Mazo at will was convenient, but an awful lot of chakra went into extracting a bijuu. Nii had been their first, and they were still unsure of what kind of aftermath they left in their wake. The edges of Konohagakure had suffered from a Fox Fever after the Kyuubi Attack some years ago. If anyone on the Shimo-Kumo border started getting ill from residual Nibi chakra, their plans would be revealed to the shinobi world ahead of schedule. 

He was satisfied to find that none of the beast's excess chakra had begun permeating the landscape. The extraction had been perfect. The corpse of Nii Yugito had been recovered by someone, but Zetsu had felt a chakra signature that he didn't trust. 

It was dense energy, not unkempt but tightly controlled and so intense he could feel its wielder's emotions. Panic. Fear. Resolve. And the like. 

There was blood on the cold ground where the jinchuuriki had tried to drag herself to safety. It looked like the body had been flipped onto its back, and blood had pooled around it. Then, the body had been lifted and carried away. 

There was slime on the ground. 

"I do not know, Pein-sama."

Senju Tsunade was the only slug summoner in existence, and she wasn't going to fly into the wild to save a jounin that had nothing to do with her. It had to be someone else. But who, Zetsu couldn't yet say. 

"Find out."

Konan blows at the crane. It takes flight, and flutters into the vents, and out of the base. 

"Of course, Pein-sama."

* * *

 

"A princess from Grass Country?" he asks, rubbing his chin. "I wasn't aware Grass Country had princesses."

"Maybe they don't," the green toad in front of him croaks, "but that only came from word of mouth. I didn't hear the girl herself claim where she was from. I heard it through the grapevine."

"Interesting," he returns. "And she had a pale eyed guard, you say?"

"A Hyūga without a doubt."

"She must be a princess if hime sent a lone Hyūga to help her find her brother of all things," he huffs. "Only royalty could pay out the nose for that kind of focus."

"You're not going to like who she's looking for, boy-o," the toad croaks. 

He narrows his dark eyes. 

"Who?"

"Bubbles," the toad croaks. 

He curses underneath his breath. The only people looking for Utakata were Kiri hunter nin. He doubted Tsunade would send a Hyūga on a mission to nab one; it was possible that the Hyūga and the Grass princess were both clever henges, or slow burn genjutsu. 

"Any idea how long it'll take until they reach him?" he asks the toad. 

The creature shrugs its shoulders. 

"Can't say," it replies. "We don't even know where he is. The princess and her guard are in Yuga and that's already too close to the border for his comfort. It's likely they'll push further north before going into Frost or Sound Country to tail him. After that, I can only guess."

"Okay Gekomatsu," he says. "That's enough for now. Keep an eye on this 'Princess Suseri'. If she turns out to be Kiri or Akatsuki, report back immediately."

"Roger that!"

The green toad pops out of existence. 

Jiraiya leans back against the tree trunk, and looks up to where Naruto is facing off against his own shadow clones. He didn't like this, not one bit. From Itachi's reports, it had seemed as though no two man cell was currently assigned to capture Utakata. If they wanted to have any chance capturing the bijuu without outright killing themselves, they'd have to take them in numerical order. 

Nabbing the Kazekage would prove to be a difficult task. A single jounin kunoichi from Kumo might be a bit more simple. The Mizukage was probably easier still considering his tenuous hold on his village; it wouldn't be hard to ferment a revolution so wild that no one noticed when their kage had gone missing. 

Everything only would get harder once they hit the four-tails. 

This meant that someone was moving, and that someone knew which jinchuuriki housed which bijuu, and had an idea of how and where to find them. Regardless of who this supposed princess and her Hyūga bodyguard were, they were people after jinchuuriki. Which meant that potentially, Naruto was in danger. They had no way of knowing the nine-tails was so close but if they got even so much as a whiff of his chakra, they'd probably be baying for his blood, too. 

It troubled Jiraiya, not knowing if these people were Akatsuki, hunter nin, or some third unseen player in this terrible game.

They'd have to leave Hot Springs Country soon, if they weren't careful. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case it isn't clear, Onyomi is Onyomi and Saiken is Saiken. Onyomi-Saiken is the general name for the hive mind that Onyomi and Saiken have when they see through each other's eyes, if that makes sense.
> 
> minor changes made to character to accommodate canon divergence. as stated in 'moss and bone' this is a huge canon divergence because i thought the fourth war arc and the kaguya stuff was absolute bullshit. akatsuki is staying the Big Bad in this verse. zetsu is just gonna be sometimes a dick and sometimes reasonable. he's not two people anymore. 
> 
> gee guys i wonder what's gonna happen on the kazekage retrieval arc :-))) wonder how that's gonna work out :-))) who knows :-))))))


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He told me a pink haired girl would come asking about him."

Tenten has been told that her hands are so steady, she could be a surgeon. They have to be. 

She was an orphan, had been the child of orphans who lost their parents in the genocide. Not having a last name but having red hair or having a foreign name was the same thing as claiming a family.

Her parents had died in the Kyuubi attack. She had lived for a handful of months in the orphan's quarter until a pair of cousins had come to claim her. They raised her in the Uzushio quarter until she made chuunin and decided to live on her own. 

Her cousins had been some of the few Uzushio blood relatives left in Konoha. Rei's mother was Tenten's aunt, and Yoko's father married one of Tenten's mother's cousins. 

During the Kyuubi attack, everyone had gotten a little lost in the initial evacuations. Rei was a genin by then; she had wanted to stay an help subdue the beast. An uncle (because every man older than thirty was an uncle when Uzushio was a decimated island and true lineage meant less than ensuring that their traditions survived, that their _people_ survived) had grabbed Rei by the shoulders and tugged her along. She had been too young. 

They all knew a little instinctively that cousin Kushina had died that night. And they were all violently bitter about the gag order. The uncles and aunties of the quarter had petitioned the Sandaime multiple times during his second reign for custody of Uzumaki Naruto. They were refused every time. 

Tenten had known from his last name that he was her cousin, but she had been a year older than him and so had never met him at the academy. Then came the Chuunin Exams and the Konoha Crush and there really just hadn't been any time. 

All of this is to say that sealing, that fuinjutsu is in Tenten's blood. In the little house that Rei and Yoko shared, and in the Uzushio district once it had been rebuilt, seals had covered everything. There were seals to keep fresh meals hot until whole families got home. There were seals to cover electrical sockets so little ones couldn't stick their fingers in them. There were seals that could freeze ponds in the summer for ice skating. There were slow delay seals that worked as alarms, little smoke bomb seals for playing tag, seals written on collars to keep dogs close to the property.

Sealing was in the blood, but the blood was scattered, diluted, or maybe just confused. But sealing was Uzushio, and everyone in the quarter could claim that.

Tenten had discovered Tsunade when she was around six, had heard her name and of her legendary abilities. She was enamored not only with Tsunade's legendary strength or with her medical prowess, but with the pale purple diamond on the woman's head. It was the same shape and color (but perhaps a different technique) than that of Mito, a cousin who had died long before Tenten was born. 

Tsunade was Mito's granddaughter. Which made Tsunade one of Tenten's cousins. And that? Had been  _staggering_.

Cousin Tsunade was all Tenten could talk about. She had started taking her academy lessons much more seriously once she discovered this relation. She had worked to make her chakra control finer, had worked to pack on muscle tone. She had tried reading a couple of texts on medical ninjutsu but unlike the strength training and chakra control, Tenten found medical ninjutsu, well, boring. 

"Tenten," Yoko had said, with her hand on Tenten's cheek, "you don't have to be  _exactly_ like Tsunade to be an exemplary shinobi."

Tenten had tears in her eyes and a book on advanced anatomy held tightly to her chest. She understood the basics, but she didn't like studying it and she felt terrible for feeling bored by what one of her cousins had dedicated their  _life_ to understanding. 

"Tsunade's got that wicked seal on her forehead, doesn't she, odango?" Rei had asked from her place on the floor, flicking through a magazine. 

"Y-yeah," Tenten whimpered, wiping tears off her cheeks. 

"Medical ninjutsu is something that has to be learned with dedication," Rei continued. She looked up at Tenten with a broad grin, red hair wild about her head. "But fuinjutsu's in our blood."

She had returned all the medical texts she had checked out to the library, and had started asking uncles and aunties around the quarter for ink and paper. Nobody let her touch them at first. Instead, Tenten sat beside them as they used ink and blood and chakra to turn paper into a weapon. 

She had been allowed to start designing small barrier seals at first. Yoko thought they were safer than anything else. She started with a seal that would keep the cookie jar shut. Then she moved up to keeping a barrier around the kitchen knives. 

It had spiraled from there. She had always had the best aim in the academy, so on occasion she would stay after class to throw her own weapons at targets. She had used the storage seals of her own making to clean up afterwards. 

Then something had clicked.

She designed her Twin Rising Dragon scrolls in the academy when she was eight. 

They weren't exceedingly special in theory, but they were in execution. Anyone could use a storage scroll to grab something in the heat of battle, but Tenten could use the scroll as a weapon  _itself,_  as an extension of another weapon.She had been honing her accuracy with kenjutsu of all kinds because of the massive store of pointy objects that was to be found in the many shops around Konoha, and even in the basement of the academy. Combining the two felt  _right._

It had gotten her a measure of attention. Tenten only knew because Rei and Yoko were a little tense when she graduated. Nobody used fuinjutsu like Tenten did, or at least no one outside the Uzushio quarter. Rei's skill was with exploding tags; her homemade batches made decent pocket money when she sold them among chuunin. Yoko was part of the elite force in charge of reinforcing the barrier around Konohagakure proper. Yoko's talents kept her primarily in the village doing maintenance. Rei's skill kept her on missions that required heavy demolition. 

Those in the Uzushio quarter kept their talents with fuinjutsu quiet. The pocket of immigrants held a kind of generational resentment for Konoha's failure to protect her allies. Everyone in the quarter had known someone who had died in the genocide. 

After the Sandaime refused to allow Uzumaki Naruto to be raised in the quarter, that resentment had only deepened. Because those in the quarter were the best at fuinjutsu, there was a measure of strained give and take; there was nowhere else for the last of Uzushio to immigrate to, and no one else was as skilled at their techniques to maintain the giant barrier over Konoha. 

So they kept their heads down and lived quietly. The people of the quarter used seals in every day life, and almost singlehandedly supplied the entire village with storage seals or exploding tags and so on. But they rarely used them in battle. Combat fuinjutsu was a carefully guarded secret. People in the quarter rarely let those on the outside study with them. Senju Tobirama had learned from Uzumaki Mito's sister, Suzue in the past. Namikaze Minato had only learned what Kushina and a couple of patient aunties had taught him. 

Tenten was the first Uzushio in several generations to publicly display her talents. The uncles and aunties had cautioned her. They knew what it meant to be a master of fuinjutsu, or to be one who mucked around in its power. The Hyūga, Orochimaru; many had used fuinjutsu to dangerous ends, giving the style of fighting an ugly reputation. 

They also knew that fuinjutsu masters were responsible for the continued storage of the bijuu in the jinchuuriki. Minato had been one of the last fuinjutsu masters to do so.

The Sannin had come before, had studied fuinjutsu to different ends. Jiraiya's understanding was excellent, but he had never had cause to perform it to the extent that Minato had. Orochimaru's seals the uncles and aunties called too corrupted to be true fuinjutsu. Tsunade's Byakugō only resembled Mito's in appearance; their functions had been wildly different. 

There was a reason the transfer of the Kyuubi from Mito to Kushina had gone so smoothly. Uzumaki Mito had been one of the oldest, most powerful fuinjutsu masters on the planet. She removed the tailed beast from herself and placed it into Kushina as if it had been nothing. The only reason there had been attendants and extra guards was to ease the Sandaime's mind. 

So when Tenten's Twin Rising Dragons technique was born before she even graduated the academy, there was talk in the Sandaime's circle and amongst the aunties and uncles in the quarter. Talk about whether or not this child would be groomed to be the next master of fuinjutsu who would have the awesome burden of transferring the Kyuubi from the current host to the next.

The uncles and aunties of the quarter were some of the last living people who had seen Uzushio in its prime. While they were proud of her, they also understood how quickly normalcy could be chewed up and spat back out. None of them wanted Tenten to be burdened with such purpose at such a young age. 

So when Yoko and Rei were questioned about the extent of Tenten's abilities, they lied and said the Twin Dragon scrolls had been laying around. A family heirloom. That Tenten had been practicing with them for years.

Tenten had gone along with the lie because she was told it was good for her. And if Tenten couldn't trust her family to look out for her best interests, then there wasn't anybody out there who she could really trust. 

So she kept her head down about fuinjutsu, learned how to from Rei and Yoko and her aunties and uncles. She bit her tongue when she saw Neji's Caged Bird Seal for the first time, nearly vomited when she saw the three ugly tomoe on Uchiha Sasuke's neck. She pretended she didn't know Mitarashi Anko from her occasional visits to the quarter for old Kazue-jiji's expertise. 

But when Sakura comes home from Shikkotsu and introduces her to a pale pink slug called Sango, Tenten can't hold back. 

A creature of the many that gave birth to fuinjutsu (because what was slime but ink, and what was the earth but paper) wanted to teach her, and Tenten wouldn't, no,  _couldn't_ say no. The promise of a year of Sango's tutelage before it was decided if she was worthy of a slug contract made Tenten's heart soar. And it made the uncles and the aunties scramble over themselves to ask her questions about what she was learning in her lessons with the slug. 

"Shit, odango," Rei had said, peering over Tenten's shoulder at the many notes and scribbles of arrays she had taken down from her first lesson with Sango. "You could blow yourself from here to Iwa with this stuff." 

And it was true. Tenten understood theory better than she understood anything. She knew how much chakra could go into a seal before it became unbalanced, or how much power the thing could hold if the characters were drawn on it with a hard hand or with a light one. She learned D-rank ninjutsu of every transformation from an uncle or an auntie or a cousin and repeated them until she could taste the way katon burned or the way raiton crackled. Then, she worked incessantly until she could channel the different nature transformations into a seal to do specific tasks. 

The first time she managed to make a barrier seal that didn't just bounce a person away but burned their palms, Tenten was so happy Yoko forgot to be angry at her for putting the damn thing on her front door when Tenten knew full well she and Rei were coming over for a nice family dinner. 

It goes on like that. Tenten devours lower rank elemental jutsu that won't fry her tenketsu and incorporates them into her seals. She starts carrying them around in her pack just in case she'll need them in battle. One time during a spar, she slams a doton seal on the ground that disrupts the earth enough to force several large spikes out of the ground. Lee's assault blows right through them, but the shock on his face is enough to make Tenten preen for a week afterward. 

She starts working on modifications for her Heavenly Chain Disaster scroll. She learns how to harness specific nature transformations in seals, and wraps them around the handles of her weapons to augment her attacks. She figures out how to use a seal to make a spear out of hard packed earth, and works on how to concentrate a katon so finely in a seal that when she slaps it on a dead pig, the whole thing cooks itself from the inside out. She splits it with Chouji after, and takes the rest back to the Uzushio quarter to share with the cousins that still live there. 

When Temari is on one of her many diplomatic missions to Konoha, the two of them have a spar. When Tenten wraps a fūton based seal around the handle of her nagitana and cuts the cyclone Temari sends at her in half with a wave of wind just as sharp and deadly, Temari looks as livid as she does impressed. It earns Tenten a kiss after the spar that makes her head spin. In between biting Tenten's lips until they're pink and leaving a purple bruise that will get her teased for weeks, Temari manages to ask, "How the  _fuck_ did you do that?"

Tenten smiles and wraps her calloused fingers around Temari's waist. 

"Family secret," she replies. 

Sango teaches her the about the difference between using fresh and old blood, new or old ink. How using a fingertip to create a sealing array is both more powerful and more unstable than using a brush. Sango shows Tenten how to carve seals into the soft packed earth of Chinatsu-baa's vegetable garden and how to pour blood at the center of the seal to activate it instead of needing blood throughout. 

Tenten begins taking even more pristine care of her hands. She wears gloves more often than naught, even when she's at work or when she's helping an uncle carry something from an auntie's house to a cousin's. She keeps her fingernails cut short and well manicured, and goes to first aid workshops held by the hospital to learn how to splint her fingers if they're ever damaged in battle. 

She was already ambidextrous through years of practice, but that was with weapons. Tenten teaches herself how to write with her right hand with the upmost care, and won't let herself so much as touch a piece of sealing paper until the characters she uses to spell the names of every person living in the quarter are tidy and neat. The mechanics of writing with her non dominant hand are much finer than the mechanics of throwing a knife with it. Tenten works until she's equally proficient at both. 

She thinks her progress goes noted only by her team, her girlfriend, and her family in the quarter until Shiranui Genma seeks her out.

"I heard you've got a talent with fuinjutsu," he says around the senbon sticking out of his mouth. "Think you could give me a hand with this?" 

He hands her a well kept notebook filled with notes on space-time ninjutsu. Tenten leafs through it briefly, but it looks like unintelligible gibberish. 

"What on earth do you want me to do with it?" she asks, looking back up at the jounin. 

"Take it apart," he replies. "See if you can reverse engineer it."

"Reverse engineer  _space-time fuinjutsu?"_

Genma gives her a little grin and a thumbs up. 

"Good luck. I'll need your results in two weeks if you can handle it. That's when I head out on a mission I'll need it for. Thanks for your help!"

He turns and walks away, leaving Tenten with a book full of notes she can barely read. 

She doesn't know it at the time, but this request is the first part of her Jounin Exam. 

* * *

"You convinced a Konoha kunoichi to  _what?"_

In their shared mindscape, Saiken floats her six tails in the air as if to shrug. Gyūki rubs his hand over his face; it's a habit he's picked up from Bee. 

"She's not a nukenin," Saiken says. 

"As if that makes it any better!"

Kokuō seems unbearably calm for the situation at hand. Son Gokū seems about as interested as he ever does. Shukaku's absence is noted the same way Kurama's is; it's ignored, blithely. Shukaku was a brat and Kurama had gotten sour with age. Chōmei is absent as well, but they pay it little mind.

It is Isobu and Matatabi they miss. Who they worry over. 

"She's not the Child of Prophecy," Kokuō says after some time. 

"Who gives a damn about the prophecy?" Son Gokū snipes. "Gamamaru is a _baby_ who thinks he can play at seeing the future. I've been seeing the future longer than he's been alive. His prophecy is _shit._ " 

Kokuō looks over at her troublesome brother, but curls her tails tidily around her feet. 

"Son is right," Saiken says in that voice of hers. "The prophecy has no bearing on us, only on the humans. And only then it can only be as powerful as they allow it to be."

Saiken takes a moment to collect her thoughts, looking troubled. Gyūki narrows his eyes.

"Gamamaru's words have already set into motion a strange chain of events, the outcome of which I worry over," Saiken continues. "But Sakura has become our sworn protector."

Son Gokū laughs at that, and the sound is just as mean as it always was after the humans got a hold of him. 

"A puny human is our sworn protector?" he asks. "I'd like to see the day!"

"If you're patient," Saiken says, "you will."

Son snorts and rolls over, showing his back to his sister. Saiken spits at him, and he hollers when the acid hits his back. It's harmless here, in their minds. They can't hurt each other. But it surprises him enough that it makes him jump. 

Kokuō laughs just the smallest bit, and Gyūki relaxes. 

"Releasing us into the world would solve - a great many things that have gone wrong," Gyūki says after some time. 

Kokuō nods in agreement. Son hasn't turned around; he looks like he's thinking. 

"She's on her way to Utakata," Saiken says, "and after that she'll be upon Han and Rōshi. She is coming to help us, so be kind to her."

Gyūki folds his arms and nods. 

"She saved Yugito's life," he says. "Matatabi loved Yugito. Yugito treated her right. Your kid Sakura's alright in my book."

Saiken gives him a grateful look, but Gyūki waves it off. 

"We'll see," Son says, still turned away from them. "We'll see."

Kokuō sidles up next to him, lays her tails on his shoulder. He doesn't brush her off; he'd always been a softy with her when he was hard with his other siblings. Something about being born so close after one another, perhaps. 

"Wouldn't it be nice to roam freely again?" Kokuō asks. "It has been so long since we've felt sunshine the way our hosts do." 

She coos and coddles him in a way the others will not. Son is harsh, but he is harsh because he is angry. The same way Shukaku is angry and Kurama is angry. The only reason he does not avoid them the way those two do is because Kokuō comes to see them all, and where Kokuō goes, Son will not be far behind. Initially, they had thought that she had followed him. It turned out to be the opposite. 

"What do I tell Bee, Saiken?" Gyūki asks. 

Saiken's face falls a little at that, but she doesn't falter completely. She's younger than him, but she's definitely smarter. She was the only one to leave half of her energy in the real world. Onyomi was probably the only thing that was keeping the human world from caving in on itself. And wasn't that precarious?

"Nothing that'll get Sakura hurt," Saiken replies. "He can't leave Kumo right now and neither can Yugito. They're probably on a tight lockdown. Tell them to wait. We will get Sakura to them eventually, when we have to."

"Before these Akatsuki guys come after another one of us," Gyūki says grimly. "I understand."

"Be careful, brother," Saiken says as he begins to fade. "Do not put her in danger, but do not put your friend in danger either. The ten of these children working together, they are the best hope we have."

Gyūki gives her a wink, and Saiken settles a little. Feels a half a bit better. 

"Don't worry, baby sister," he says. "I won't let you down."

* * *

The northernmost part of Hot Springs Country touches the lip of the Northern Sea. Ironically, this is where least of the tourist attractions, hotels, inns, and onsens are. It is a sleepier part of the landscape, swept with cool air and colder water. 

The Northern Sea takes its cues from Frost Country. Even in the summer, the water is bitingly cold. And though the north parts of Hot Springs Country are lovely, the heat of Fire Country that warms the waters of the onsens in Yuga proper draw much larger crowds. 

Sakura was born in the spring, and the cold air gives her goosebumps. She breathes in and out the way Ikue taught her, filling her lungs with the Breath of Life to keep the cold at bay. 

Once she and Neji had retrieved their things from the inn and had gotten out of the walls of the village hidden in the tourists, it had been a dash northwards. They kept steady pace with one another, but Sakura could feel anxiety pooling in her stomach. 

She only had Neji's help for twelve months. One month had nearly passed, and nearly two weeks of it had been spent running down Yugito to make sure she survived the extraction. Neji had already proved a great help by orchestrating the ruse that got them closer to wherever Utakata was. Sakura knew that she'd survive without him, that she'd probably be just fine, but her stomach coiled in a hard knot at the idea of facing the world, facing the leaders of the elemental nations by herself. With unfamiliar people. 

Utakata and the other jinchuuriki could feel like cousins all she wanted them to, but Neji was a piece of home. The only piece she had brought with her into the wild. The thought of losing him worried her. 

Her plan for releasing the bijuu wasn't very set in stone. In a perfect world, she could convince the leaders of the elemental nations to just let their jinchuuriki die with their bijuu not extracted so that their chakra could seep back into the natural world. That'd restore balance and nobody even had to die. A true win-win scenario. 

What would probably occur was Akatsuki snatching jinchuuriki and murdering them and Sakura arriving in the aftermath to heal what could be healed. There was no guarantee that she could save the others the way she had saved Yugito. Sakura had arrived when the Kumo jounin still had life left in her. If she had been even a few minutes later, there would have been nothing she could've done. 

What Sakura needed was more information on Akatsuki. She needed information on their movements, how they traveled, and what exactly they were after by capturing the bijuu. She also needed to know how exactly they were storing the beasts, and she needed to demolish whatever it was they were storing them in. She wasn't a sealing master; there was no way she could release the bijuu from their prisons without killing the jinchuuriki. And she couldn't just  _let_ Akatsuki capture eight more innocent people and wait until they were finished to save their lives. 

There had to be more she could do. She just didn't know what exactly that 'more' was. 

The only person she knew of with a contact in Akatsuki was Jiraiya, and lord only knew how helpful he'd be able to be, or would be willing to be. He was a toad sage, but Sakura didn't know where exactly the toads fell in terms of alignment to nature. It was easy to assume that they were advocates of balance, but even before Sakura had contracted with the slugs of Shikkotsu, she had felt their power through their summoning scroll. 

It was entirely possible that power alone had driven Jiraiya to the mountains. Why else would he leave Konoha once he returned? 

But Tsunade wouldn't have entrusted Naruto to Jiraiya if she didn't have faith in him. The same way she wouldn't have just allowed Sakura to go out into the wild if she didn't think something good would come out of her leaving. In all likelihood, Sakura and Jiraiya were both working towards the same end. Why else would he be allowed to train a jinchuuriki privately outside of the village walls?

Naruto was being moved around purposely, that was the only reason. If he wasn't in Konoha, there was no way Akatsuki could rifle through the village until they found him. His actual location was probably a secret known only to Jiraiya and Tsunade. Naruto's three year training mission was an attempt to keep Akatsuki from pinning a tail on him. Because who would go up against a Sannin to get to a jinchuuriki? It was tantamount to suicide. 

Jiraiya's lack of village affiliation made him a perfect candidate for the job. Sakura bites the inside of her cheek; her shishou is much smarter than anyone gives her credit for. All this time, Naruto had been on a training mission but Jiraiya had been on a three year bodyguard detail. How unbearably clever of the Godaime Hokage. Sakura feels absurdly proud. 

She needed to find the other jinchuuriki but she needed to find Jiraiya as well. He had a contact in Akatsuki, and whatever information he was getting would prove to be invaluable to Sakura's cause. The only trouble was  _convincing_ the toad sage that Sakura could be trusted. The four Byakugō on her forehead and the Hyūga at her side probably wouldn't be enough considering the gravity of her purpose. 

 _'Utakata first',_ she thinks,  _'then Han and Rōshi.'_

Jiraiya would have to wait until after Sakura had ensured the safety of the three jinchuuriki that were a hair's breadth out of her grasp. She had given Yugito a monstrous clue that would bring both her and Bee to Sakura when the time came. Gyūki wouldn't lie to Bee; the ushi-oni would get the truth from Saiken, and Saiken would report everything from Onyomi. Everything would align perfectly when it happened. 

Sakura breathes in through her nose and says a little prayer for patience. Everything needed to align  _immediately._

Hot Springs Country is much smaller than Fire Country. Sakura knows this because the amount of time it takes to get out of her home land is more than twice of what it takes to get from Yuga proper to the North Sea. The distance is so short Sakura feels silly for running so hard. They could've taken a leisurely stroll by Konoha standards and still made it before nightfall. 

As it is, it does take the two of them the rest of the day to get to the North Sea. The landscape changes subtly around them, getting just a little more harsh and a little more windswept. Then, all at once, the grass is sand and jagged pebbles under their feet. 

Sakura and Neji stop running in step with one another, and they peer out in opposite directions along the rapidly approaching shoreline. It's nearly desolate out here, but the man had said north, so north they went. Sakura's a moment away from feeling like a fool for trusting a stranger when Neji clears his throat. 

Over his shoulder, Sakura can see an old building bent as the wind has seen fit. It's a little decrepit, and a little derelict, but there's something oddly familiar about it. 

As they get closer, they notice the place is small but sturdy. Someone's clearly been maintaining it, even as the building has tipped against the sea breezes. There's the smell of something cooking, and the softest possible sound of chatter. Not many people, but a few. It seemed to be a popular place for those who knew where to find it. 

They enter a little hesitantly, Sakura suddenly feeling shy. It's not like her, to run across two nations only to clam up when she's a couple of moments away from meeting the person she's been running towards. Besides, the odds that Utakata is still here are sky high. It had been a year since Sakura's vision. It wasn't very likely to come true. 

Neji is the one to approach the innkeeper, but Sakura stays on his heels. 

"Excuse me, ma'am," Sakura says, manners knocking her right in the teeth. Her mother would string her up by the toenails if she wasn't respectful this far away from home, denigrating the proud Haruno name even though technically, Sakura isn't really a Haruno anymore. "I'm wondering if you can help us find somebody."

The woman is stooped only in faculty. Her eyes are bright eyed and mean as a cat's. She takes one look at Neji and his hitai-ate beside her and shakes her head. 

"We don't do business with shinobi around here," she says. "You want help finding someone, use your ninjutsu. I'm not sending you on the tail of one of my paying customers. Now buy something or scram."

Sakura bites the inside of her lower lip. She looks at Neji, who takes it as his cue. 

"I'll be outside," he says, touching her elbow before he exits the way they came. 

Sakura looks back at the woman, and doesn't bother with a plaintive expression. This innkeeper has seen shinobi before, has worked with and against them. She's nothing like the suckers in Yuga proper. She probably had family who were shinobi before Yuga shut down their military operations. She looked to clever to be a civilian grandmother. 

"He has yellow eyes, brown hair, and he's in danger," Sakura presses, voice soft. "I need to find him."

The woman looks at Sakura as if she's said something unbearably stupid. 

"A lot of people need to find a lot of people," she replies. "Buy something or scram."

Sakura grinds her teeth. 

"I'll buy one night if you tell me where he is."

"You could buy five nights and I still wouldn't help you."

"He's my cousin and he's in danger."

"His wife has come with a similar plea. So has his little brother. And his poor, sweet nephew."

Hunter nin. Kiri had sent hunter nin after Utakata, and they had come here too, asking the same thing of this woman. Sakura wonders how long the innkeeper has been keeping Utakata safe, how long she's been lying or misdirecting trained shinobi. Sakura wonders how on earth she's done it and managed to keep her life.

"I was born in Konohagakure," Sakura tries.

"And I was born in Taki," the woman replies.

She tries not to lose her patience. It's admirable, really it is. It's a testament to Utakata, to who he is as a person, that this little innkeeper is willing to fight her to keep his whereabouts unknown.

"I'm not Akatsuki," she says, voice lower than before.

"And I'm not the Godaime Hokage."

Sakura loses some of her patience. She slams her fist down on the desk in front of the innkeeper, denting some of the lacquered wood.

"What do I have to say to make you trust me?"

The woman gives her an appraising glance, then folds her arms across her chest.

"Follow me."

The request leaves Sakura dumbfounded. The woman turns over her shoulder, and starts walking down the hallway. Sakura takes one look behind her at the door, knowing Neji will be able to see her no matter where she goes as long as she doesn't do something stupid, like leave Yuga, and she follows the innkeeper.

The woman takes her down several tidy hallways and then up several flights of stairs. The attic of the inn is just as well kept as the lower levels, but there is one difference. 

The attic stinks of blood. 

On a cot, tucked away, is a middle aged man with a broken femur. A younger man, a boy of no older than fourteen is sitting beside him, trying to convince him to eat something. There is bone jutting just so out of his skin, and there is pus around the wound. Sakura can smell the poultices that have been applied, can see the bandages that have been removed and applied. It's not a fresh injury, it's at least several weeks old, but it's healing poorly, and Sakura can taste the decay of it in the back of her throat. 

"Help him," the woman says. 

It is a part of her vow to heal those who ask for her help. Honor bound or not, Sakura still would have done it. 

"I need to wash my hands," she says, snapping off her black gloves. 

"Shigure," the old woman calls to the boy, "give her what she asks for."

Shigure leaves the older man's side with some hesitation, but he comes to bring Sakura what she needs. She learns the break happened after an attempt to fix the slanted roof, that the nearest doctor had been three day's ride away and hadn't been able to do much more than try to prevent infection, and had failed at even that. Sakura stares down at the bruising beneath where the bone juts out of the thigh and grimaces, but she does not falter. 

The Mystic Palm comes to her like an old friend, coating her hands in healing energy. Sakura lifts the pus, finds the root of the infection, and with delicate and calculated swipes of her chakra, she eliminates it. She dumps the rot into a bowl Shigure places beside her. 

She can't hold the man down and fix the bone at the same time, and Shigure is a bit too scrawny to be useful. So Sakura knocks the man out and carefully dulls his nerve pathways so he won't wake himself up from the pain. Encouraging the bone back under the skin takes several hours, and finding the disparate pieces that had shattered and coaxing them back to their proper place takes another two. 

By the time Sakura gets the bone set, she's nearing the end of her reserves. She'd been running all day, not to mention she'd barely rested once she and Neji returned from their mad dash to Kumo and back again. She thinks to use some of the senjutsu chakra she has stored in her muscles, but resists. If she didn't do it for Yugito, who was a jinchuuriki, she most assuredly couldn't do it for a civilian man. Instead, she leaves the bruising to heal naturally, and wraps up the site where the bone had been forced out of the skin before she healed it. 

It's exhausting work. She and Neji had only arrived at the Northern Sea when night was starting to fall, and by the time Sakura finishes the healing, dawn is starting to stretch over the horizon. 

Shigure leads her quietly out of the attic, thanking her profusely along the way. He leads her to a different room downstairs, an office, where the innkeeper is sitting patiently. There is breakfast for Sakura on her desk, two eggs over natto, some rice, and miso soup. Neji is nowhere in sight, but Sakura can feel him; he must have procured a room. He's awake still, which is a bad sign. He must have stayed up to make sure she was alright. An eight hour strain on his Byakugan set Sakura's teeth on edge; she was going to hit him for that later. 

For now, she is ravenous. 

She falls upon the breakfast the innkeeper placed in front of her with an unusual amount of gusto. Her reserves were almost completely exhausted, and fine healing takes an extraordinary amount of focus. She had only noticed her stomach growling once she had been sure the man would be able to walk again. 

The woman watches her eat, which isn't as strange as Sakura feels like it should be. Her father watched her eat when she was little to make sure she was getting enough nutrition, and her parents had both watched her with hawk like intensity when she went through her diet phase at the academy. Being scrutinized was the least of Sakura's concerns, not when she was as hungry as she was. 

"He told me a pink haired girl would come asking about him." 

Sakura looks up and slows down. She places her chopsticks down, but Masumi gives her a look that reminds Sakura all too much of her father, so she keeps eating. 

The innkeeper pulls a piece of paper out of her sleeve and places it on the table. She slides it down the length of it towards where Sakura's bowl of miso soup sits. 

"Said she'd made a deal with some kind of spirit," the woman continues. "That she'd have to heal anyone who asked for her help."

The innkeeper folds her arms across her chest and watches as Sakura very pointedly does not pick up the piece of paper, but instead continues to eat. 

"Seemed like a foolish bargain to make with a spirit, but what do I know," she says, waving a hand. "I'm old. One of the oldest kunoichi left in this part of the country. Kids these days probably make deals with spirits all the time."

Sakura eats some of the miso soup, then resumes shoveling rice into her mouth. 

"He said you could fix this damn back of mine if I asked," the woman says, "but Shouta's leg was much more important."

Sakura swallows. 

"I could take a look at your back, too," she says, hoping there's no rice in her teeth, "if you like."

The woman raises a brow, but doesn't say anything else. Probably because Sakura has eaten everything placed in front of her, and is delicately picking at a piece of rice stuck at the corner of her mouth. She had learned very quickly as a child that grown ups liked you better if you cleaned your plate. It seems to be an invaluable lesson.

"Go to bed," the innkeeper says. "Your little boyfriend's been worried sick and it's getting on my nerves. You can check on my old back in the morning."

Sakura nods. The innkeeper knocks on the wall behind her twice before the folding screen beside them moves back, and a young woman appears. She clears the desk in silence, before exiting the way she came. 

Sakura's eyes are on the piece of paper on the desk. 

"He left that for you," the innkeeper says, nodding down at it. "I haven't looked at it. But he left it a whole year ago knowing you'd come for it. So it's yours. Do with it what you will."

Sakura takes the piece of paper and slides it into her pocket. The innkeeper smiles at that and says, "Good girl. That's a healthy sense of paranoia you got there." 

Then the woman rises, so Sakura stands as well. She leads them out of her office and back into the inn proper, down the corridors and towards what Sakura assumes is the room that has been provided for she and Neji. 

"Here you are," the woman says. "I don't want to see hide nor hair of either of you until noon. Rest. Use the baths. They're good for you."

Sakura smiles and gives the woman a bow. 

"Thank you very much, Masumi-san," she says as she rises. "I can see why my cousin trusts you."

The innkeeper rolls her eyes at that and says, "Go to bed, girlie," before making her own exit. 

Once she's passed a corner, Sakura knocks once and enters the room. Neji is there, sitting down at the low table, waiting for her. His Byakugan is deactivated now that she's in the room, but the irritation that she feels at him exhausting himself for her sake dissipates when she remembers the piece of paper in her pocket. 

She places her hand on the wall beside the door, feeling for one of the muffling barrier seals that she knows Neji will have placed there. Once she's sure it's there, she crosses the room quickly and sits down on the other side of the table as him. She sits, removes the piece of paper from her pocket, and carefully unfolds it on the table. 

On it, is a symbol of three sharp spikes. There is nothing else. 

Sakura exhales through her nose, and looks up at Neji in excitement. 

"Kusa," she says, reaching out to grab his forearm. "He's in Kusa."

* * *

"What's this?" Yugito asks.

She has moved back into the temple, rather than her apartment at the jounin quarter. A had been very accommodating, while also being very scrutinizing. Yugito understood. 

Ichigo is smiling up at her from her place in the doorway, Hie and Kikyo right behind her. Their hands are full of folded paper cranes. 

"They say if you fold one thousand of these, your wish will come true," Ichigo says. "So the three of us are folding one thousand so you can stay as our jounin sensei!"

Yugito smiles down at them, feeling touched. She waves them into the temple house, and they scramble to take off their shoes without dropping their hard work. 

"Three thousand paper cranes is a big commitment," she says wryly as she starts boiling water for tea. 

She doesn't know where her genin found the time to even start. They should have a temporary sensei until a permanent one is found. Yugito is sure Karui would be up for it; she's very good with kids despite her attitude. 

"But it's for you, sensei," Kikyo says as she folds a piece of origami paper in half. 

"We're gonna make our formal request to the Yondaime," Ichigo explains, "and while we wait for it to process, we're gonna fold cranes. I'm already at twenty!"

"I'm at twenty- _three_ ," Kikyo buts in. 

Yugito looks at Hie, who merely shrugs. She laughs at him, and ruffles his hair. She slices a couple of apples and places the tidy slices on a table, leaving enough toothpicks for the four of them. 

"Do you have a wish, sensei?" Hie asks as she returns with the snack. 

Yugito sits down beside him, and pulls a piece of origami paper towards herself. It's a slim purple piece decorated with clouds. She folds it in half, then folds the half in over on itself. Origami had been a tidy habit for a child. That was why she had picked it up. It kept her out of the way of the adults. And it was a good way to hone her precision. 

"I think I'll figure mine out once I start folding my cranes," she replies. 

Ichigo peers over at the purple paper in Yugito's steady hands, jaw dropping. 

"How're you so good at that already, sensei?" she asks. 

Yugito looks up at her and gives her a little wink. "Years of practice."

"That's not a crane, sensei," Hie says, sticking a piece of apple in his mouth as he watches her. 

"You're absolutely right," she says. 

She holds up the finished creature, and Kikyo laughs. Yugito has folded a perfect paper cat. 

"Now here's a cat to eat your cranes," Yugito says with a smile. She sets the cat down, and pulls another piece of paper towards herself. 

"What gave you all this idea in the first place?" she asks.

"I found one on the street!" Kikyo says. 

Hie wrinkles his nose, and Ichigo grabs an apple slice. 

"It wasn't actually on the street," Hie says to Yugito's raised eyebrow. "It had caught the wind somehow. Someone lost it, I guess."

Hie pulls a tidily folded white paper crane out of his pocket and sets it down on the table beside Yugito's cat. 

"How funny," Yugito muses. 

"It was Kikyo's idea," Ichigo supplies helpfully. "Once we found the first one, she remembered how folding a thousand paper cranes makes your wishes come true, so we all decided to start folding them for you, Yugito-sensei."

Yugito hears the teapot start to whistle, and she stands before the ache in her chest can get too strong. How sweet of them, and how kind. She resolves to take her physical therapy twice as seriously; not just for herself, and not just for her village, but for her genin. Three thousand paper cranes, just for her. To think that they would go through such lengths. 

She returns with the tea and the cups, pours enough for each of them, and goes about making paper turtles and paper boats while they bay at her to stop wasting their paper. Yugito laughs at them, feels affection swell up in her for her kits. It's one thing to know that the priests and priestesses of the temple were happy to know she was okay, it was one thing to know that they cared. But the proof of the way her genin feel about her is spread out over the table, and in their convictions.

Many hundred pieces of multi-colored origami paper; forty-three paper cranes already folded, plus the pristine white spare. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes 'odango' is absolutely a sailor moon reference thank you for asking. there's another low-key reference to a much beloved manga if you can catch it. let me know what you think it is in the comments!
> 
> made some pretty sweeping changes to tenten's largely unexplored backstory; hope y'all like them! 
> 
> on the naruto wiki, she for some reason doesn't have an elemental affinity? which is super weird because gai does and he's not even a huge user of ninjutsu? which leads me to believe that everyone can use ninjutsu, but some people are just … extraordinarily bad at it or their chakra pathways are too undeveloped for them to use it. but we KNOW that shinobi can use multiple nature transformations while simultaneously having an affinity. 
> 
> SO. for the sake of my very personal take on naruto, people without nature affinities are just as capable of using every nature transformation, except it's very difficult and takes time and training. i'm of the mindset that if someone had bothered to take a little more time to teach lee (and tenten for that matter) about ninjutsu instead of just focusing on the clan heirs or WHATEVER, he might've been able to figure something out. but i digress.
> 
> some of the prophecy is staying and some of it is going. two students of jiraiya's will absolutely change the world. but who exactly those students will be might shock you.
> 
> comments are food for starving artists xx happy weekend, everybody!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ino bites her tongue.

She's going to be livid with him for letting her sleep in so late, but Neji's just watched Sakura run like hell across three borders, heal someone, use her summons to heal someone, then run back, and heal someone else. A nap is the least she deserves at this point. 

They had established from the intended vagueness of the clue that Utakata was probably in Kusa proper and not in some backwater town in Grass Country. Sakura's eyes had been just a little glassy with exhaustion and her hands had trembled ever so slightly where she grasped Neji's forearm. 

"We'll head out tomorrow," he had said. 

A pinched expression had crossed over Sakura's face then, but Neji shook his head. 

"You've been running on fumes for the past two days," he insisted. "You're no use to anyone if you're too tired to move."

Neji vaguely remembers hearing something from Lee a couple of years ago, when Sakura was still apprenticed full time under Tsunade. She had gone into a surgery with full reserves and came out nearly empty. There was just enough chakra left in her for her to stand, and even that got used up when she tried taking a couple of steps forward. 

Tsunade had been furious, had banned Sakura from the hospital for a week while she recovered. Sakura had broken one of Tsunade's cardinal rules of medical ninjutsu; when all else fails, the medic has to die last. There's nothing heroic in squandering your life to save another's when there are people around to help. The truth was that Sakura had gotten a little cocky, had been sure she could handle the surgery on her own and didn't need help. She was embarrassed for weeks afterwards. 

It had been a bitter pill for her to swallow at the time, and it's just as hard now. But she's had practice, and she acquiesces with a jerky nod. She doesn't like it, but she knows he's right. 

"You've eaten?" he asked. 

"Masumi-san gave me breakfast," she replied. "You?"

"Yes. One of the workers brought me in once you started the healing."

"Good."

Her grip had slackened. There were soft bags under her eyes, fine lines of tiredness that made Neji pause. She had only been on the road a little under a month, and already she looked so tired. 

Not for the first time, he wondered what exactly she would do once this grand mission of hers was over. Whether or not she'd return to Konoha, or if she'd make her way in the world like the toad sage Jiraiya. There were plenty of people who lived in Fire Country who were mercenaries unaffiliated with Konoha. She could eke out a safe living for herself that way, if she wanted to continue practicing the shinobi arts. And it wasn't like Tsunade wouldn't let her work full time at the hospital if Sakura returned.

There were plenty of things she could do if she came back to Konoha but did not take back up her oaths. She had made promises that bound her to the village; she'd have to come back. But if she wanted to, she could leave again as well. 

"We can head south and go through Fire Country to get to Kusa," he offered, watching her as she ran her fingers carefully over the piece of paper. 

Utakata's brush strokes were fine and precise. It was impossible to mistake them for anything else. Neji is pleased the jinchuuriki is so practical; Naruto was smart but also ridiculous. He probably would've left a riddle he found on the bottom of a container of a pack of instant ramen that was only made in Kusa. He was as specific as he was silly. That had always been the best part about him. 

"Why would we do that?" Sakura had asked, voice gone soft. 

They both knew why. Hot Springs Country shared the Northern Sea with Sound Country. And if they got into Sound, they'd have to head south west towards Kyoushu to get to Waterfall Country, then south again for Kusa. 

Their chances of running through Oto and seeing the Uchiha were slim. The chance stood notwithstanding. 

"It'd be a waste of time to go back south now," she said. "If we hug the sea, and keep going west, once we hit the border between Waterfall and Earth Country, we can head straight south on the border until we get to Kusa. We'll be in neutral land. That's smarter."

Neji folded his arms across his chest. She wanted to see him, he knew that. The Uchiha, Orochimaru; they were blights that Sakura had sworn to correct. She hadn't explained very much to him, and with good reason. Tsunade had told him to be cautious about what he reported back to the village, and Sakura was likely doing the same.

Saving the life of one of the Kumo jinchuuriki was already enough to land Sakura in a cushy cell in T&I. Neji wasn't that far along for letting her do it. Kumo and Konoha weren't enemies per se, but the Hyūuga hadn't forgotten what they tried to do to Hinata, and what they did do to Hizashi. That rage still fueled politics today. It had a hold on Neji, too. 

Sakura's mission was to restore the natural balance of the world. That the compression of mass quantities of chakra in human beings caused a butterfly effect that demanded chakra to fill the void the bijuu had left. That was what she had told him. The rest Neji sussed out for himself. The Shinobi World Wars were the result. The Uchiha Massacre. The Konoha Crush. Even the Hyūga Incident was part of nature reclaiming the chakra human beings had intentionally stolen.  

He hadn't been sure he believed all of it until Sango and Shigeo singlehandedly strong armed his family into a revolution. Sango's strange body on his arm, rifling through every thought he ever had, and Shigeo's intimate knowledge of the Jūken because he created the style; these truths were the only proof Neji needed to know that the world was a much larger place than the elemental nations, and that there were much stronger forces at work outside of them. 

And while Sakura had never mentioned out loud to him specifically, that releasing the bijuu back into the wild was her end goal, no one who watched her tear through Frost Country to save a stranger's life could possibly say that Sakura intended to leave her newfound cousins to the will of their villages. 

But releasing the bijuu wouldn't immediately set the world to rights. There were political and economic factors that needed to be taken into account; in all likelihood, Sakura wouldn't be able to achieve her mission without plunging the world into war. What was more, the socio-political factors that had driven the elemental nations to war, to massacre, and blood theft, were partially what fueled the shinobi world at large. 

Corruption, violence; these were every day aspects of their lives. Their nations, their leadership used them, and flourished. Neji had seen firsthand as a  _child_ what those deadly machinations could do to a family. He had lived in fear, along with his branch cousins, of a mass cull after the Uchiha Massacre. But Neji had been lucky, even though he had been sealed. There was safety, privilege that came with the Hyūga name. Even though he wasn't part of the main family at the time, he could afford a measure of easy movement. 

Civilians hadn't been so lucky. War orphans like Tenten and Lee. Even shinobi of families that weren't one of the clans, like Sakura. Or Naruto who was caught between the two. They were never even half as safe as Neji was, precarious as his position had been. 

Balance was Sakura's goal, but balance had a heavy cost. 

Neji didn't know what exactly Sakura's intentions towards Sasuke were, or Orochimaru for that matter. They didn't speak often of Sasuke, no one in the Konoha Eleven did. It was largely out of respect for Sakura and Naruto, the last two loyal members of Team Seven. And it was also because of how close they had come to losing over  _half_ of their graduating class to one boy's decision. 

She wouldn't risk their lives, Neji knew that logically. And he trusted Sakura. After everything she had done, she was more than worthy of that. He didn't trust the Uchiha. 

Neji is aware that he himself was only a handful of situations, circumstances, and decisions away from being exactly like Uchiha Sasuke. It had been his team that reined him in. It had been Naruto that changed his mind, and Sakura who had given him something to do with his new outlook. He had been resistant at first, but change had happened. 

Maybe that was the difference between the two of them. Neji had wanted to change. Sasuke hadn't. 

"It makes more sense to hug the border of Fire Country until we get to Grass," he said. 

That'd be safer. He was still a Konoha jounin, and that demanded respect in Fire Country. His name and rank meant little to anyone other than a bounty hunter outside that border. 

Sakura looked up at him with a look that was not sad, but was somehow tender. Her heart was too big. It was going to get her killed. 

"We can split up and you can hug the Fire Country border," she replied. "But I'm cutting through Sound."

It wasn't a matter of convenience. By all means, his plan would save them time. But Sakura had plans that he wasn't privy to, and that - concerned him. 

"Let's go south," he pressed after a few moments of silence. "Let's go south, and straddle the border between Fire, Sound, Kyoushu, and Waterfall. If we stay right on those borderlands, we're in neutral territory."

It'd keep them closer to reinforcements in Fire if anything happened. Neji was nothing if he wasn't paranoid. 

"We can go down the border between Hot Springs and Sound until we hit Fire," he suggested, "then we follow it until we hit Grass."

Staying in the borderlands was safer, anyway. And this way, Sakura could still observe Sound from a distance that didn't make Neji want to cringe. 

She had looked up at him, then down again at the piece of paper between her fingers. She flexed her fingers, and her veins began to shimmer with a pale purple hue.

"I'll think about it." 

She tossed the piece of paper in the air, and as it fluttered downward, she formed the seals for her summoning without drawing blood. As she formed the ram, she said, "Zesshi nensan," and spat dark yellow acid onto the piece of paper. It corroded, dissolved into nothing. There was no wasted movement, no wasted chakra, and no wasted acid.

"You shouldn't have done that," he said anyway.

"No evidence," she replied.  

Even if Sakura was an incredibly efficient shinobi in terms of her chakra, there was no way she hadn't just exhausted her original reserves with that healing. Using senjutsu chakra to destroy the clue had been wasteful. 

"Sakura -,"

"Go take a bath," she interrupted, rising to her feet. She gave him a wink, but he could tell her heart wasn't in it. She was in a peculiar mood.

"You've been keeping up with me for the past couple of weeks, you're probably dog tired." 

She stretched, popping her back as she did. Then she turned and disappeared into the bedroom. He listened for the sound of her settling down, and once he was sure she was either asleep or on her way to it, he pulled out a piece of parchment and a pen from his pack. 

_Stopped on the border to help a cousin in need. Returned to Hot Springs, headed north on a lead. Pursuing new information southwest._

He had to be vague enough in the official report that their movements could be tracked, but not finely. His coded report was a bit more explicit about which borders they had stopped on, and how far southwest they were pursuing their new information. 

Neji got to his feet, and for a moment considered writing something to Misaki or Hinata, or Tenten and Lee. Gai, as well. He shook the thought from his mind; maybe later. He had only been gone a month. They wouldn't miss him that much. Besides, regular reports were the same as telling your loved ones you were still alive. If they asked the Godaime, she'd be able to tell them just as much. 

He got to his feet and stepped out onto the little veranda attached to their room. He cast his eyes around, and with a sigh, made his way towards the nearest scraggly tree. They weren't the oaks of Fire Country, but they would have to do. 

The Senju had used this jutsu to deliver messages to each other during the First War. The paper was all cut from trees created with the Mokuton, imbuing the paper with the technique's own kind of chakra. It became a way for ninja jounin rank and above to send in reports when they were on longer missions, and returned when they came home; it was less conspicuous than a messenger hawk, and less flashy than a summons. 

Neji pressed the slip of paper between his palm and the trunk of the tree. With his free hand, he formed a doton seal and pulsed his chakra into the paper and the wood. The ink on the paper melted into the tree. The ink would seek out the nearest tree born of the Mokuton, strengthened for the journey with Neji's chakra. It would travel all the way back to Konoha and end up on the tree stump hidden in the Hokage Tower. 

Only the Godaime, because she was the sitting Hokage could access the stump and glean reports from her jounin, tokubetsu jounin, and ANBU in the field. It was the safest way they could communicate. Still, Neji felt cautious. 

He dropped the seal, and pulled back the slip of paper from the tree. It was clean of ink and words, and ready to be used again. As he turned back out of the veranda, he heard the sound of a toad croaking. Neji's eyes narrowed, but he made himself relax. He had been running, too, and wasting chakra activating his Byakugan to examine a green toad's tenketsu was healthy in terms of paranoia, but foolish in terms of his health. He turned and entered their room once more. He crossed towards the bedroom and stepped inside as quietly as he could. Sakura raised her head in a daze, then relaxed back down when she recognized him. 

He sat down beside her on the futon, and watched her for a while, still feeling a little unsteady. It'd take time for them to get all the way to Kusa, and time was something that was not on their side. 

* * *

Gekomatsu appears in the women's only bath, and his slimy green body causes a mass exodus of beautiful women. This would not be a problem for Jiraiya if it also hadn't meant that his peeping was noticed in the melee.

He's nursing the welt on his forehead afterwards when the green toad finally makes his way to him. 

"That was rude," he says, admonishing the toad. 

"So's peeping on women," Gekomatsu snipes. 

Jiraiya sniffs and looks over his shoulder to make sure they have a measure of privacy. Once he's done, he looks back at Gekomatsu and waves his hand for the toad to provide his report. 

"Definitely not Kiri or Akatsuki," the toad says. "The man had the Kami Mokuton."

Jiraiya rubs his chin in his hand. A jounin then, or someone of a higher rank. Probably not ANBU all things considered. But definitely someone loyal to Konohagakure. Tsunade didn't just give those slips of paper out just because she could. They were for people she trusted. The Sandaime hadn't given any to Itachi, leaving him down to his crow summons to ferry information to Jiraiya. Jiraiya himself didn't have any either; his toads carried what messages he needed to get back to the village. 

"And this Princess Suseri?" he asks, peering down at Gekomatsu. 

"Trained in medical ninjutsu."

That - couldn't be right. There were few talented medical ninja outside of Konoha. Kabuto had been one of them. The chakra control required was too fine, and not usually found outside of hidden villages. Even then it was a highly specialized craft. There was a reason Tsunade's return to Konoha heralded an age of increased trade with the village from others. Everyone wanted in on the fruits her health reforms; more living healthy shinobi meant more money.

"How good is she?"

"Patched up a workman's injury. One of his bones was sticking out of his leg. She put it back in."

That was even more unheard of. Even low grade medic nin had trouble with anything bone related other than setting them; that had been something that had infuriated Tsunade during the war. Not just the lack of medical ninja, but their utter incompetence. 

"She could use Katsuyu-san's acid."

That just about floors him. 

The slugs of Shikkotsu were very particular with who they contracted with. Tsunade was the last one since her grandfather. If anyone was a new slug summoner, they had to be someone Tsunade knew. If they were a medic of a decent caliber, they doubly had to be someone Tsunade had set eyes on before. 

From his memory, he recalls that Shizune had never been particularly interested in that contract and so had never pursued it. 

"She summoned Katsuyu-sama, you mean?" Jiraiya asks, just to be sure. 

Gekomatsu shakes his head. 

"The girl spat the acid."

A sage then. No one outside of a slug sage could use one of the summons own techniques. Jiraiya had been a toad sage long enough to know that much. 

"What does she look like?" 

"Pink hair, green eyes. A little shorter than Naruto, I think. She wasn't wearing a hitai-ate."

Jiraiya rubs his hand over his face and wonders what exactly Tsunade is doing. Few if any active duty shinobi didn't in some way wear their hitai-ate. Kage didn't because it was redundant. Elders or council members didn't either for the same reason. 

Jiraiya didn't because he was no longer a Konoha shinobi. And he got a feeling that he and this girl were in very similar situations. 

"You didn't catch her name?" he asks. 

"Nope," Gekomatsu responds. 

That's fine. Jiraiya's almost positive he remembers one of Naruto's teammates, before he left. A girl who matched that description. In his report from the Konoha Crush, Gamabunta had mentioned her. Sakura, had been her name. Haruno Sakura. 

Haruno no more, most likely. Any wandering shinobi who cared about their family back home didn't keep their surname for long once they were on the road. 

"They're coming back down south on their way to Kusa. They're gonna hug the border with Fire Country," Gekomatsu adds. "They're tailing Bubbles for sure."

And that puts a damper on Jiraiya's mood. A slug sage was after the slug bijuu, and the jinchuuriki who held him. Jiraiya didn't like the way that sounded. But the Hyūga with her had filed a report, had sent one back using the Kami Mokuton. That meant that whatever Sakura was doing was happening not under Tsunade's approval, but definitively under her watch. 

This girl was more like Jiraiya than he thought. 

Jiraiya knew he was more than capable of protecting Naruto from enemies, but he wasn't so sure about how the boy would fare against his friends. He was open hearted and forgiving, much too forgiving for a person in his situation. 

"Tell me when they start moving, Gekomatsu," Jiraiya says. "I'll meet them when they're on their way."

He needed to get to Sakura before Naruto did, and he needed to figure out exactly what she was planning. If she had a Hyūga at her side, in all likelihood, she wasn't planning on doing anything that would harm Naruto. And even if she was, it wouldn't be the first time a Konoha shinobi betrayed someone who loved them; it probably wouldn't be the last either.

* * *

Ino's called down into T&I on her day off, and that alone is enough to raise her hackles. She was supposed to be helping her mother in the flower shop today, but the sudden summons to her workplace makes Ino take off her apron and promise her mother she'll return soon. 

Masako kisses her on the cheek. They are discreet for the sake of the civilians in the shop. Her mother gives her a little squeeze on the arm, and then Ino is gone. 

It's never a good thing, being called to T&I when you aren't fresh back from a mission or aren't on shift. The runner hadn't indicated there was any emergency that Ino herself needed to tend to, but also hadn't given her any clue as to why she was being summoned. 

Ino was a Yamanaka. She was apprenticed to two poison masters in Shizune and Genma, and was Morino Ibiki's shadow in Interrogation Corps, and her father's shadow in Analysis. There was no reason for her to be called so informally, and so abruptly to the dark building near the Forest of Death. 

She steels herself, and moves forward. She gives a curt hello to the secretary at the front desk (Sachiko) and asks her politely about how her cat (Aki) is doing, and whether or not the kittens have been born yet. Sachiko gushes briefly about the kittens being born a little past midnight while she presses a discreet button under her desk to alert Ibiki to Ino's arrival. 

The scarred man appears moments later and waves Ino over to him. She makes her polite goodbyes and gets into step beside her mentor. 

"What's this about, Ibiki?" she asks, dropping any semblance of proper address. She's agitated and she's a little on edge; T&I isn't her safe place, not even remotely. But it is somewhere she's made herself comfortable. She doesn't like the idea of having to make her workplace somewhere she has to watch her back. 

"They didn't say," he replies, not even raising an eyebrow at her lack of respect. "They wanted to talk to you about that friend of yours that went awol." 

She doesn't flinch. Sakura. They want to talk about Sakura. It was only a matter of time. Sasuke leaving the village had a similar ripple effect; all the Konoha Eleven were brought in for questioning in the aftermath. Naruto's training journey hadn't had a similar effect. 

But Sakura had gotten formally released from her vows to the village by the sitting Hokage. There was no reason for any interrogation. 

"Have her parents been brought in for questioning?" she asks. 

Ibiki nods once. 

"And?"

"They're keeping the results of these sessions close to their chest."

Ino furrows her brows. 

"Who exactly?"

Discreetly, Ibiki raises his hands to his head to adjust his bandana. He walks a couple of steps ahead of Ino, so that she can see the way his hands form field sign behind his head. 

_'ROOT.'_

Ino's stomach drops. She knows as much as anyone else in T&I knows about ROOT, which is still less than the general shinobi population knows. They're elite forces, above even ANBU. They answer only to the Hokage. 

It makes her uncomfortable; why in the world would Tsunade want more information on Sakura's movements if she had been the one to give Sakura permission to go in the first place?

 _'She wouldn't,'_ Ino thinks. 

Ino's been trained to gather information from the moment she could process it. She knows how to ask questions, when to look twice, when to lie and how to do it well. Nobody in T&I likes having ROOT members in their business; they're not disruptive, but they're creepy fuckers whose eyes are a little dead inside. Ino's never spoken with a ROOT member, and she's never had to work with one either, but the complaints she hears from Oyone and Ranka tell her all she really needs to know. 

So does this. 

Ibiki leads her to Room Six, one of the nicer spaces usually reserved for those shinobi who need to be buttered up before they're cracked in half. Ino wants to snort. As if it will be that easy, as if she will roll over that quickly. 

Doubt, paranoia, suspicion; these are tools, second senses that save the lives of shinobi. They all blare loudly in Ino's mind as she enters the room and sees her interrogator. 

A young man, she clocks it immediately. Orange hair. ANBU mask with pale green markings along the cheeks; whiskers, maybe an otter or a mongoose? She can't see his eyes from behind the mask. He sits rigidly, spine a perfect line in his uniform in the chair opposite the empty one nearest Ino. She can't see his hands; they are beneath the table. 

She hears the door click silently behind her. Ibiki has fed her to a wolf. 

"Yamanaka-san," he says. "Do have a seat."

It's not a request. Ino steps forward and takes the seat. 

"What is the nature of your relationship with Haruno Sakura?"

Ino bites her tongue. Right to business then. No wait. They were starting from the bottom for the sake of being thorough. But Tsunade knew about Sakura and Ino's friendship; it had been a talking point during Ino's brief stint with medical ninjutsu before she and Shizune began bonding over corrosive substances.

This wasn't one of Tsunade's men. It couldn't have been.

"We've been friends since we were children in the academy," she replies.

She doesn't leave her hands on the table. Two can play at that game. Her interrogator makes no movement to show that he's noticed, but Ino can tell that he has.

"Have you been in contact with her since she left the village?"

"No."

"Do you know where she currently is?"

"I do not."

"Were you aware of her intentions to rescind her oaths to Konohagakure?"

"I was."

"How did you respond?"

Ino raises an eyebrow.

"We had a fight about it," she replies. "I didn't want her to leave."

"Why not?"

She goes for something underhanded and knows that Sakura will forgive her later.

"I didn't want to know two traitors."

The ANBU doesn't flinch. It's a low blow to throw around mention of Sasuke, but it's a decent cover and it's believable. Ino wasn't exactly quiet about her distaste for the Uchiha once he left the village. Her flimsy crush had gone up in flames when she saw Shikamaru, shaken up outside of Chouji's operating theatre. 

"She is not a traitor," the ANBU says, cleanly interrupting her train of thought. "She was released of her oaths by the Godaime Hokage."

Ino shrugs a shoulder. 

"Doesn't make that much of a difference," she says. "If the Uchiha had permission to leave, he still would've harmed Konoha citizens and shinobi to get what he wanted."

The ANBU nods. He isn't taking notes. In all likelihood, they've sent someone with hyperthymesia or something of the sort, or someone trained to memorize totally what they heard. 

"And you haven't had any contact with Haruno Sakura since she left the village?"

"No," she says. "I already told you I hadn't."

"Is it true that you requested a two year solo mission assigned to be Haruno Sakura's bodyguard detail when you found out she was leaving?"

Shit. 

"Yes." 

They already knew. There wasn't much point in lying about it. 

"You would have willingly left the village to guard, who in your words, is as good as a traitor?" the ANBU asks. 

Ino cracks a self deprecating smile. 

"We were friends as children," she says. "I thought if she had someone from home tailing her, she would make better choices."

She doesn't say that Naruto did the same thing, in his way. Tried to follow Sasuke to the end of the earth only to get beaten bloody for his efforts. 

"And what choices are those?" 

Ino shakes her head. 

"I don't know."

"Haruno Sakura recently became a slug summoner, is that true?"

She doesn't move a muscle, and then she does. Just moves her bangs out of her eyes. Not moving is a tell as much as moving is. 

He's fishing for information on Shikkotsu. Tsunade wouldn't give it to him, that much was true. The forest was off limits, the same way other sage regions were. Only those who wanted to summon those spirits had access. 

"Yes," she says. 

If they wanted dirt on Shikkotsu and Sakura, it was obvious they weren't Tsunade's men. 

"And when she returned from the forest after receiving her contract, she broke her oaths with the village," the ANBU says. 

"She was released from her oaths," Ino says, biting the words with her loveliest smile on her face. "The Godaime released her from her vows as the Sandaime released Jiraiya."

She's letting her emotions influence her speech; it's good. These guys are expecting exactly that. Ino's too pretty to be a good shinobi; she's a kunoichi fit for honey pot missions and little else. Nobody expects her to be as intelligent as she is. And as infuriating as that can sometimes be, it works to her favor now that she knows how to use it. 

"You, too," the ANBU says, "are considering contracting with the slugs."

It's not a question. 

Ino feels oddly settled. They're needling for information on Sakura as well as Shikkotsu. They want to know if any other potential slug summoners are planning on leaving the village. That was reasonable enough. They could hardly spare more chuunin. 

"The woman who saved the Yamanaka during the Warring States Period was a slug summoner," Ino says, injecting pride into her voice. "Becoming one myself is my way of honoring her."

Lies are best told when folded into the truth. Inoko was a sage, and becoming a summoner was Ino returning to her roots, honoring Shikkotsu as much as she honored her foremother. 

"Hyūga Neji is currently on a one year bodyguard detail with Haruno Sakura."

She already knew that. Their graduating class, herself included, had seen them off nearly a month ago when they left. Ino had been so angry. She wanted to shake Sakura, convince her to change her mind one last time. 

"He is," she replies. 

"Why do you think that is?"

She shrugs. 

"He's her friend. He wants to keep her safe."

The ANBU doesn't lean forward, but somehow Ino can feel the intention. There's a flare of chakra so slight that if she didn't have Susumu training her to notice such things, she wouldn't have felt it coming. 

"Keep her safe from what?"

There is a mind pressing against her own, demanding access. Ino's mind is a steel trap; she's been training with her cousins since birth to resist their own techniques. Training children to deflect mental torture at age five was seen as too excessive in peacetime; Ino had learned how to at age six. 

She throws up her defenses aggressively, mind whirling through the implications. There were several mind entering ninjutsu; they weren't completely exclusive to the Yamanaka. But the way this mind went straight for hers tells Ino that whoever this man is, he's of her blood. A cousin, maybe distantly related. She wonders where she's seen him before, and why on earth they'd send a Yamanaka to interrogate another Yamanaka. 

She'd been deliberately not looking into the eye holes on his mask just in case, had stared at the place between the eyebrows. Some people needed eye contact to cast mind altering ninjutsu, the Yamanaka included if they weren't strong enough. His hands had been hiding beneath the desk; he could have been making any hand sign. 

His mind presses harder against hers, but Ino is the Yamanaka clan heir. She can throw off her father when she's concentrating hard enough. This man is insistent and dangerous, but he's nothing compared to her. 

"I'm not sure what she needs to be protected from," Ino says lightly. "Maybe her being released from her oaths is a ruse, and her bodyguard is there to help her complete some mission given to her by Godaime-sama."

Her interrogator seems to take that in, but his chakra still pushes at her mind. Ino doesn't give an inch.

"Perhaps you are right."

Ino shrugs her shoulders at him and gives him a winning smile.

"Is that all, ANBU-san?"

She flares her chakra hard, an angry pulse that shoves his ninjutsu away from her mind. It doesn't knock him back or anything, but he does flinch and Ino is pleased by it.

"I'll be going then," she says when he doesn't answer.

She stands and gives him her back as she exits the interrogation room. When she shuts the door behind her, she sees Ibiki in the hall standing stiff and unhappy.

"That guy tried to get in my head."

It's very specific wording for a Yamanaka. Ibiki knows exactly what she means.

"I'm going to speak with my father about this," she says.

The idea of an elite ANBU force that answers only to the Hokage in name, but was moving despite everything Ino knew Tsunade knew about Sakura made her stomach turn. Something wasn't right here. Either she'd been thrown completely for a loop, and her Hokage was behind this, or someone else was pulling the strings. Someone who had a Yamanaka under their thumb, and a damn strong one at that.

Someone who was after potential slug summoners. Someone after people who knew Sakura's habits, her patterns, and her movements. Someone who was after Sakura.

"I'll file a report later," Ino says over her shoulder to her mentor. "I have to find someone."

She can only hope she gets to Tenten before any of these ROOT shinobi do. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this house, we play fast and loose with canon. root was never really "disbanded" publicly or privately, it just kind of coalesced into another arm for the hokage when sarutobi gave danzou a slap on the wrist because sarutobi is still a military leader and he's not gonna waste soldiers even if he does think he's the Nice Hokage lmao. for all intents and purposes, root is an arm for the hokage but the hokage actually means danzo, as you now well see. 
> 
> comments are food for starving artists xx
> 
> thank you for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You're easy," she says. 
> 
> Neji nods solemnly. 
> 
> "I am."

"So?" Yugito asks, feeling unusually jittery.

She is usually unruffled, well poised. But lately, she has lately felt out of sorts. She is glad that her genin come by as often as they do, always folding paper cranes, sometimes bringing her snacks and news of their appeal to A. The priests and priestesses of the temple are happy to have her around, and they put her to work scrubbing floors and tending to the animals that roam their land. They're doing their best to keep her busy, but Yugito still feels like she's going stir crazy.

So when Bee arrives, it's a blessing. 

"What did Gyūki have to say?"

Bee sits down at the table, and lays his elbows on the lacquered wood.

"It seems your Izanami's not a goddess at all. Pink hair, green eyes, and about this tall?" 

Bee puts out a hand, a vague approximation of the emissary's height. Despite his assertion that Yugito didn't actually see a goddess, she can't help the flush of excitement that tears through her. 

"Yes, that was her. Who is she really?"

Bee raises an eyebrow at her excitement, and nods his head towards the open doorways of the temple. 

"Speak freely," she encourages. "They won't say anything."

And they wouldn't. The temple was neutral ground, ground meant for the worship of the gods only. It was older than Kumogakure itself, and much older than the position of Raikage. A and those before him had no jurisdiction over the goings on of the temple, unless they were a direct threat to the village proper. 

"She was a Konoha kunoichi, got released from her oaths. And she's running around with information nobody else knows."

Yugito presses forward. 

"Like what? How to heal a jinchuuriki? Like who all the jinchuuriki are?"

Bee nods, rubbing at his chin. 

"Who we are, where we are, and who we've got inside," he says, "But Gyūki insists that she's an ally."

"But how does he know?"

"He spoke to the others and all of them confirmed, this girl's not a threat and she's out to save the world."

Yugito pinches the bridge of her nose, confused and a little bit overwhelmed. 

"Save the world?"

" _'Restoring balance'_ is what he said in my mind, but I ran out of syllables and it didn't rhyme."

She gives Bee a look and he shrugs, a self satisfied grin on his lips. Her irritation leaves her abruptly, and she reminds herself that she's been putting her faith in him for as long as they've both been jinchuuriki. He's doing this to help her relax; he can probably tell how high strung she feels. 

"Stop rhyming, Bee, and give it to me straight," she says. 

Bee sighs, and the almost happy look on his face leaves as quickly as it came. He gets solemn, and Yugito can abruptly remember the days when he oversaw her training, when she was a frustrated child who hated the creature inside of her. He always rhymed or rapped then too, to her endless annoyance. He kept doing it around her to rile her temper in an attempt to teach her how to control her emotions. 

The first time he ever stopped rhyming in front of her was when she got her chuunin promotion. All he said was 'congratulations' and Yugito had thrown herself into his arms and started bawling.

He only ever speaks normally when he's at his most sincere, or when he's at his most panicked. 

"She's a slug sage, see?" he begins. 

"That explains the healing," Yugito murmurs. 

"Exactly," Bee replies. "For her contract, she made a deal with her summons that she'd fix the imbalance of chakra in the natural world in exchange for their power."

Yugito furrows her brows. 

"That's why she had to leave her village," she says. "Too many conflicts of interest in a military state when you're trying to 'save the world', apparently."

Bee nods. 

"Tailed beasts are creatures made from pure chakra," he starts, "and sealing them in jinchuuriki takes that chakra out of the natural world. So nature's all out of whack, and starts demanding that chakra back in different ways."

It clicks. 

"The Shinobi Wars?" Yugito asks. "The Bloody Mist?"

Bee nods solemnly. 

The idea that by existing, Yugito had inadvertently caused several wars and multiple genocides made her stomach turn. She was a shinobi, yes, a kunoichi of Kumogakure, no less. She had killed before. But innocents had died in the world wars. Families had been wiped out, obliterated from the face of the earth. 

"But if she releases the bijuu back into the world," Yugito presses, "they'll destroy it."

Bee looks at her like she's disappointed him, and abruptly Yugito feels like she did when she was a child under his tutelage. 

"You know better," he says. 

And Yugito nods because she does. She should. 

Matatabi had been one of the gentlest creatures Yugito had ever known. She had loved Yugito and Yugito had loved her. Had worried about Yugito's genin, insisted on calling them her kits. If Matatabi existed in the world, she probably would have hidden in the mountains or have been housed in the temple. 

"She's strong enough to heal a jinchuuriki post extraction, that's the important thing," Bee says. "If any more of us get taken by Akatsuki, then there's a chance we don't have to die."

"That's assuming she can get to us on time," Yugito says, happy Bee's changed the subject. "I don't even know how she found me. She must have been passing through."

Bee raises an eyebrow. They're both too old and too smart to believe in coincidences of that caliber. But the only people that could possibly know a bijuu was in danger was another bijuu. There were only nine tailed beasts, and all of them were sealed. It was impossible that this girl was a jinchuuriki. 

"In any case," Bee says, "Gyūki thinks it's best if we stay in Kumo for now. Wait for her to come to us."

Yugito's mouth presses into an unhappy line, but she doesn't disagree. She's still not strong enough yet, still piss poor at sensing chakra and she absolutely can't manipulate it. She'd started training with a kenjutsu master to sharpen up her skills, but it would take months for her to be where she used to.

"What's her name?" she asks after a moment of silence. 

Bee looks up from where he's inspecting the origami cranes and cats and turtles on the table. Ichigo had used a piece of ninja wire to thread all the creatures together, and hung them around the edge of the table.

"Sakura," he replies. 

"No surname?"

He shakes his head. 

"Not anymore."

It was smart. It meant she had people she still cared about. 

"She's not in the Bingo Books yet, so she doesn't have a moniker either," Bee adds, picking up a paper octopus and giving its many tentacles experimental tugs. 

"But she's a slug sage, so I'm thinking something like Shikkotsu no Sakura," he says, putting the octopus back down. "The alliteration is crispy, don't you think?"

Yugito snorts, but nods in agreement. She folds her arms across her chair and leans back into it. 

A slug sage. That made sense, all things considered. Though staying in Kumo made Yugito itch, she knew it was necessary for now. 

Still, there was something about the place. Shikkotsu. There was something about it that seemed almost familiar. She rolled the word over in her mouth, and could just barely taste peaches, could just barely feel grass whispering against her feet. Shikkotsu. 

"Come on little lady let me buy you a meal," Bee says, "you've been cooped up for a week and that's not ideal."

And Yugito smiles because of course he would start again the moment she forgot she had told him not to. 

"Alright," she says. "You're buying."

They stand up and head out, putting on their shoes, and discussing where they ought to eat as they go.

The white paper crane quivers in a breeze that is not there.

* * *

Tenten's bent over a book she's borrowing from her old cousin Chinatsu, trying to figure out how in the hell Genma got his hands on one of the most convoluted, complicated pieces of fuinjutsu outside of the Uzushio quarter when there's a series of staccato knocks on her front door. 

She rears back, pencil deadly between her two fingers, and scribbles a quick note before she gets to her feet. Her wards are accustomed to the chakra of the people who visit her often. They usually give her a light ring if a stranger has decided to drop by. 

When she opens the door, Ino's solemn face meets her and Tenten lets her inside without another word. 

"Your place has some of the tightest wards outside of the clan compounds," she says by way of an explanation, taking off her shoes. "I don't think they'll hear us here."

Tenten chews on her lower lip and runs her fingers down her doorjamb. A thin array of seals glows a faint blue with the chakra she's just injected into them, and her muffling seals lock the sound in the apartment solidly within the apartment. 

"Who's trying to listen in?" she asks. 

Ino rubs at her temples and mutters something like, 'I'm so going to get fired for this' before she takes a deep breath. 

"You know ANBU right?" 

Tenten nods. There wasn't a shinobi or a civilian that didn't at least know ANBU existed. They were the elite of the elite. It was an open secret Hatake Kakashi was ANBU before he was a jounin sensei. It was a position that many shinobi aspired to, but few actually attained. Tenten didn't quite have it in her to be a constant assassin; she preferred support positions when she could get them and her work with fuinjutsu would probably land her in a cushy barrier maintenance job like Yoko's if she ever bothered to reach for one. 

"Well there's a different faction of ANBU called ROOT," Ino explains. "ANBU answers only to the Hokage, but ROOT is like - I don't know how to describe it. If ANBU does the dirty work, ROOT cleans up the messes afterwards."

Tenten lets out a low whistle. Ino was absolutely going to get fired for telling her this. 

"That's a pretty good way to describe it."

Ino nods, but there's still anxiety written in the line of her shoulders. 

"Go on," Tenten says. 

"No one, and I mean no one," Ino says, "really is supposed to know that ROOT still exists. It was disbanded in name under the Sandaime, but it still operated because shutting down operations would've been a waste of resources."

A waste of shinobi, she means, and a waste of time. A lot of shady shit went down during the Sandaime's reign, even for a shinobi village. The fact that he had 'disbanded' but kept operating a small splinter faction within his own elite forces was - well, concerning was putting it lightly. 

"I was just given a light interrogation by a ROOT shinobi," Ino says. "About Sakura."

That snaps Tenten to attention. 

"Why would Tsunade-sama want you interrogated about Sakura? She knows what Sakura's doing more than you do, more than any of us except Neji, and that's only because he's in the field with her."

Ino nods, and folds her arms across her chest. 

"That's exactly what I thought. Why on earth would an elite shinobi force that answers only to the Hokage interrogate me about the Hokage's own damn apprentice?"

Tenten swallows the bile rising in her throat. Corruption was possible, entirely too possible considering the world they lived in. It was naive of her to think that it couldn't happen where she lived. Konohagakure was a shinobi village just like Kumo or Kiri. Just because they were known as the 'nice village' didn't mean they weren't capable of being just as vicious as the others were to their own shinobi. 

"ROOT doesn't answer to Tsunade-sama," Tenten says. 

Ino shakes her head. "I don't think so."

"So why are you telling me?" Tenten asks. 

"I think they'll be coming after you next," Ino says. "They asked me about Sakura's summoning contract with Shikkotsu. You, me, and Tsunade-sama are the only three people either pursuing or currently holding contracts with the slugs."

Tenten's stomach drops.

"Do they know about the Hyūga?"

"I can't say," Ino answers. "It's probably safe to assume that they only know the Caged Bird Seal is a thing of the past. They've got no reason to know it was Sango and Shigeo who ended it."

"But they know Sakura had a hand in it, don't they?" Tenten asks. 

Because only the incredibly oblivious at this point didn't know Sakura and Neji were an item, or were at least coasting in that general vicinity.

"Maybe," Ino says. 

For a shinobi, a 'maybe' always means assume the worst. So Tenten assumes the worst. 

"Do they want to bring her back in for questioning?" she asks. "Sakura's no nukenin and she's got no oaths to Konoha anymore. They'd have no cause to bring her back."

"I haven't gotten that far yet," Ino says wryly. "But I know they'll be gunning for you next. They've got a Yamanaka in their ranks, and they're going to get inside your head to see what you know about Shikkotsu and whatever it is Sakura's doing out there."

Tenten's stomach knots up. There are very few people who have minds strong enough to throw out a Yamanaka. Sakura had done it when they were genin after a hellish week in the Forest of Death; that moment alone had given Tenten a healthy respect for the kunoichi. 

But Tenten wasn't so sure about how she'd hold up. All shinobi went through torture and interrogation training; she could handle having her fingernails being torn off, her hands being broken, waterboarding, the works. But having someone physically inside of her mind was daunting still. 

"Ask Sango-san to ask Susumu-san and Mitsuru-sama for help," Ino says. "Those two will be able to figure out a way for you to protect your mind."

Though now that she mentioned it, a seal that could create false memories, or even a seal for plain bodily protection might be good to ward off a Yamanaka. She'd have to figure out how to use yin chakra to fight against yin chakra; she'd probably have to ask Ino for help before heading into her own interrogation. 

"I can do that," Tenten replies. 

"Do it soon," Ino says. "I didn't give them anything, and they know you're an orphan. They came at me with a Yamanaka and they have no reason not to come at you with one, too."

Tenten's got a response on her lips when there's a thud on the roof of her apartment. She lives on the seventh floor and no shinobi runs with feet that loud if they're just roof hopping. Which means - 

"Shit I'm late," Tenten says. "I had a team meeting today and I totally forgot. That's Gai. Or Lee. Or both. Probably both."

Ino gives her a look that says she's praying for Tenten's survival as she walks back over to the front door and slips back on her shoes. 

"I'll keep you updated," she says. "I think it's best if we use the slugs to carry messages. Expect Susumu-san. Shinobi paranoia can be excused, but completely walled out sound in your apartment will be suspicious if I'm the one coming in and out. And  _not_ just because your girlfriend would try and kick my ass."

Tenten rolls her eyes at that and hides Genma's notebook and her own notes on the topic under her floorboards. She tugs a rug and her comfy chair over it and sets the room to rights. 

"Temari isn't the jealous type," Tenten says as she puts on her own shoes, double checking she's got her weapons pouch and her scrolls on her. 

"Oh sure," Ino says, "and Lee isn't enthusiastic."

Tenten snorts and runs her hand over her silencing seal. Abruptly she can hear Gai yelling at her from the roof of the complex. 

"Okay, thanks for the advice, Tenten," Ino says. "I really needed some help and I'm glad you weren't too busy to give me a hand."

Tenten slides into the ruse easy as breathing when she opens the front door, and as she shuts it, uses her free hand to pat Ino on the shoulder. 

"No worries," she replies. "I'm just sorry I couldn't be more helpful. I totally forgot about this team meeting."

"No, no, I understand," Ino says. She looks up at where Gai is somersaulting down and landing on the outside railing, mere centimeters away from her shoulder. 

"Hello, Gai-sensei," Ino says, greeting him cheerfully. "I'm sorry I kept Tenten, I just really needed her help. She's a great friend."

It's exactly the right thing to say. Gai jumps down from the railing and sweeps Tenten into a one armed hug that would crack the collarbones of any weaker human being. 

"While team training is an important part of being a shinobi, looking after one's friends and protecting bonds with those friends is tantamount to protecting them!" he bellows. "Tenten, my only kunoichi student, you are a paragon of springtime friendship! I am sure Lee would be very proud of you!"

"Thanks Gai-sensei," Tenten says. "Bye, Ino. Sorry I couldn't be more help."

Ino waves a hand at her and makes her exit. Tenten looks up at Gai, who has not released his hold on her and who in one absurdly quick motion, sweeps her up onto his back. 

"Come, my precious student, it will be faster this way!"

"Gai-sensei, I'm not eleven anymore, I can run across rooftops -"

He leaps off of her railing, and Tenten is grateful that within forty seconds of her chakra leaving her front door, the wards lock the doors for her. 

She holds on for dear life as Gai's piggyback ride takes her across the village to Team Gai's usual training grounds. When they touch down, he strikes a Nice Guy pose and Tenten leaps off his back like she's dying. 

The piggyback rides had been fun when they were genin and they easily exhausted themselves while training. Neji was like a feral cat when he even got close to being submitted to the indignity of it, but Lee and Tenten weren't baby geniuses and sometimes they needed to be carried home. Gai was the closest thing she had ever had to a father figure once her own father died outside of the many uncles in the quarter, and while he was ridiculous literally every waking moment of his life, he was still hers. And that mattered for something. 

"What's this team meeting about, Gai-sensei?" she asks, eyes scanning the field.

Lee is already there doing push-ups and so is someone unfamiliar. He's a black haired boy in a pair of black khakis and a midriff top, a plain tanto strapped to his back. He's terribly pale, like his skin has never seen the sun; he's the type of boy Kazue-jiji would drag near the roasting pit and pile a plate of meat onto. 

"Until our precious teammate Neji returns from his yearlong mission, Godaime-sama thought it would be best if we added a temporary third member to our three man cell!" Gai announces. 

Tenten looks from her teacher to the newcomer. That was peculiar. Though it did make sense, and it probably would've happened eventually anyway. Neji was a jounin regardless of how long he'd be away from the village on his bodyguard detail with Sakura. It was only a matter of time before he was saddled with a genin team, or would be assigned to lead more missions rather than to take them with Team Gai. 

Still, something about this pale black eyed boy made the hairs on the back of Tenten's neck stand up. She didn't quite like him, and she couldn't figure out why. 

"I am Rock Lee!" Lee shouts as he leaps to his feet, barreling towards their new teammate with his own personal brand of enthusiasm. "It is good to meet you, and I trust we will fight well together!"

Her hesitance is stopped short by Lee's exuberance, and Tenten ambles over to her new teammate to drag Lee a little away from him to give him some space. Lee's concept of personal bubbles was minimal at best; he was a good guy, but he had been touch starved since birth. It was no wonder he always wanted to be on top of you when he was talking to you. 

"I'm Tenten," she says, a light smile on her face. "Don't mind Lee. He's very excitable."

The dark haired boy nods and gives them a smile that makes Tenten's blood run a little bit cold. 

"My name is Sai," he says, introducing himself. "I will be your new teammate from now on. Please take care of me."

* * *

Sakura's life would be a lot easier if Hitomi could just propel her from place to place without her having to think about it. 

"You can't go somewhere you've never been," the slug admonishes her. "How would you know where to stop? You could end up impaled on something. Stupid! Walk there. It's good for your legs."

Sakura hangs her head and dismisses the unhelpful slug, but not before giving them a piece of lettuce to gnaw on. 

Hitomi's rapid movement styles were faster than a standard substitution or a shushin. They were closer to the Hiraishin in their speed, but unlike the Hiraishin, Hitomi's movement style required the user to know absolutely where they were going, down to the finest detail. It was one of the reasons why Hitomi had snatched her from the Hokage Tower and put her back exactly right there; Senju Hashirama had showed Hitomi the tower years ago, and they knew the tower and the office by heart. 

It was easier to train with it on training grounds she knew by heart, but out here in the wild, it was nearly a useless technique. She could probably get herself back to Konoha, to her parents' house, the hospital, Tsunade's office; those were places she knew like the back of her hand. If she really focused, she could probably get back to Kiri, to the Naruto Bridge. Too much had happened there for Sakura to not have at least some of it burned on the backs of her eyelids. 

She could get to the Sage Pool in Shikkotsu, but that was a dimension away and would probably drain all of the chakra in her reserves. It was a last resort if she ever needed it. And she still hadn't quite been able to master the art of taking someone  _with her_ when she transported. 

Where she could use Katsuyu's slime and Nao's solid clones without their help, there were still talents that Sakura needed help with. Shigeo always sat on her shoulder when he taught her taijutsu, and their connected minds showed her the movements before, during, and after she made them. Fudo's crystal forming techniques were easy on some days without him at her side, and difficult on others. Sango had taught her enough fuinjutsu for her to be able to copy the seal she had placed on Utakata, Han, and Rōshi. Exact mimicries were on her foot and Yugito's now, as well.

But Sakura absolutely could not manage Hitomi's rapid movements without the slug on her shoulder, guiding her through the advanced ninjutsu. 

So she'd have to run, and Neji would have to run, too. How inconvenient. She had thought briefly of putting a seal on the bottom of one of his feet; Sakura had fine enough chakra control to do it. She'd have to design a different array for it, one that would just snap the two of them back together whenever they needed back up or if they ever got separated.

But it was too dangerous, and Sakura wasn't stupid. Neji was a Konoha shinobi. He couldn't just walk around with her seal on his foot, and she couldn't just walk around knowing that she was tied to him either. It'd put them both in precarious situations. Sure it'd be helpful if they ever got captured, but if someone forced them to use the seal, it'd be dangerous. 

She rises to her feet and cracks her back as she goes. Neji wrinkles his nose from where he sits, and Sakura grins at him. 

She had been upset at first, when she realized how late he had let her sleep. But she needed the rest. She hadn't realized how dangerously close she was to complete chakra exhaustion until she woke up and her reserves were more than half full. Tsunade would kill her for that. 

But it was easy to forget now. Sakura could in an absent way, feel the strength of her four Byakugō. It was like having boundless reserves. When her own were close to empty, she didn't quite notice because there was a wealth of chakra in her that could be used if she needed it. 

Coming close to exhausting your reserves was a good way to make them deeper, like exercising a muscle. But overworking them lead to exhaustion, and an exhausted shinobi was as good as a dead one. She had been absentminded, had lost her focus. But Neji hadn't. 

So she ambles over to where he's sitting, drops down to her knees and presses her lips to his forehead. She cups his face in her hands, and he wraps his fingers around her wrists. When she pulls back, he peers up at her. 

"Good morning," she says. 

"Afternoon," he corrects, and he tugs her down to kiss her. 

It's a lazy slide of lips and tongue in the hazy afternoon light, and Sakura lets herself be pulled down until she's sitting on Neji's lap and her legs are loose around his stomach. She wraps her arms around his neck and his come up to hold her waist, and she tugs the barest bit at his hair to make him squeeze her. 

Sakura pulls back first to leave a line of light kisses along the curve of his jaw down his neck, and Neji sighs, fingers digging just a little bit into her. 

"You slept well," he says, and Sakura can't help but laugh at that. She nips at his neck, just hard enough to leave a bruise and rears back to look at him. 

He had been tired yesterday as well. And she hadn't paid very much attention. She had been livid when he kept his Byakugan active for so long, but he had been upset, worried, and angry in his own quiet way when she disappeared into the inn to heal Shigure. 

"I'm sorry," she says. _'For running you ragged. For getting upset with you for doing the exact same thing I did. For not seeing how tired you were.'_

Neji presses their foreheads together, and Sakura knows he understands. 

"Kiss me again and I'll forgive you."

Sakura hums. He says it with such a straight face that it makes her want to laugh again, and the little smile that quirks up at the edges of his lips is so lovely her stomach drops. 

"You're easy," she says. 

Neji nods solemnly. 

"I am."

It's an indulgence that she knows they don't have time for now, but certainly won't have time for later. Once she gets to Utakata, then everything will start slotting into place. There won't be any more lazy mornings, no time to hold or be held, no time to kiss. 

They'll leave very early the next morning, when the sky is still dark and dawn is approaching, thanking Masumi for her hospitality. Sakura will take a look at Masumi's back and repair some of what time has done to the old woman's spine. She'll give her some strengthening katas to do, some postures that will improve her flexibility, and Masumi will pat her on the cheek and foist snacks for the road into Neji's hands. Shigure will thank Sakura profusely for healing his father, and Shouta will try to give her a small pouch full of coins. 

They'll tear out into the night, following the shoreline to the Sound border and then they'll head south towards Fire Country as morning breaks over their heads. 

But now, now in the afternoon light, Sakura's breath hitches when Neji's hand comes up to cup her breast, and he groans when she bites down at the skin between his jaw and his throat. A little bit of time. Stolen. Theirs and theirs alone. 

* * *

"A Konoha kunoichi?"

"No," Konan replies. "She's been released from her oaths. She's more a mercenary than anything else."

She doesn't say, 'just like sensei' even though the words tug at the back of her mind. Now is not the time.

"And what are her intention towards the bijuu?"

"To release them."

Pein narrows his eyes. Konan looks as impassive as ever. She isn't folding anything, and her hands are still at her sides. She looks at Pein and wonders how Nagato is faring. 

This little farce is important for appearance's sake, even if she finds it trite. The others need to think she answers to Pein, too, especially because she is his second in command.

"Does she know about the Gedo Mazo?" he asks. 

Konan shakes her head. 

"The Kumo shinobi do not know, so I could not glean it from their interaction."

Pein steeples his fingers under his chin. The action looks peculiar on Yahiko, and even stranger still for Nagato. Konan doesn't like it. 

"It is safe to assume that she knows we have a way of extracting and storing them, but if she does not know what that method is, we maintain the upper hand."

Konan offers a curt nod. 

"Tell Tobi nothing of this. Send Itachi," Pein says. "He knows how Konoha shinobi operate."

"Kisame as well. Scouting only. They are not to engage with her. I want to know why she's protecting the jinchuuriki."

"And if they happen upon the Kyuubi?"

"Then they are to follow their primary mission parameters."

Konan nods, understanding the dismissal for what it is. She can feel Hidan's agitated chakra from just behind the door, and knows that he will barge in soon enough if she does not make her exit. 

She turns around and begins walking, preparing what exactly it is she should say to Itachi. He's on Kyuubi detail either way, so a brief detour to find a pink haired kunoichi shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience. Besides, Jiraiya is with Uzumaki Naruto either way. Itachi and Kisame would be hard pressed to beat both him and the jinchuuriki in a fight. 

"She believes," Konan says with her hand on the doorknob, "that restoring the bijuu to the natural world will bring peace."

Pein does not look at her. Konan licks at the back of her labret and waits. 

"Then she is a fool."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> due to the number of comments asking about sakura's skills, there was a year between when she got back from shikkotsu and when she left konoha, and she spent that time training on her talents with the slugs. also please keep in mind that there hasn't been a major fight scene in this fic yet, so she hasn't really had a reason to display those talents to their fullest extent. 
> 
> so be a lil patient. heads will be rolling soon in this fic, i promise.
> 
> comments are food for starving artists xx thank you for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Time to go, Sakura-san," he says. 
> 
> She turns to him, lips pursed. 
> 
> "Put on a good show, hm?"

Naruto wakes up because his seal burns too hot. It makes him feel itchy, sweaty in his own skin. He tosses and turns, throwing his blanket off of his legs. 

It's early morning, and when he rubs at his eyes he notices that Jiraiya isn't in the bed just next to his. It isn't often that they share a room; Naruto had been more than appropriately mortified the first time he woke up with morning wood with his mentor in the same room, and Jiraiya had flushed bright red the first time he tried to bring a woman back to the room he shared with Naruto. 

But every once in a while, necessity will demand a two bed room and yesterday had been a day like that. Jiraiya had insisted they stop their travels back towards the village, and they were moving south away from Yugakure proper. 

Not for the first time during their travels, Naruto was tempted to take off when Jiraiya left to tend to his own business. The border with Sound Country was tempting. He wasn't sure of exactly where Sasuke was in Oto, but it couldn't be very hard to find him. But he knows that the toads are gossips and that they tell Jiraiya what he's doing when he wanders off. Warty traitors, the lot of them. 

He looks around in the early morning light, sunshine just barely brushing through the blinds. He presses his hand to his stomach, to his seal. He knows it's not actually hot to touch, but the feeling is there. 

"Thanks for waking me," he grumbles. "Now what am I supposed to do?"

He throws his legs over the side of the bed and stretches his arms out. He hadn't planned on training today; it was supposed to be a rest between Jiraiya's regimen. He was learning how to fight more effectively with the toads. Fighting with them was usually all or none considering the way they vacillated between the size of real frogs and the size of buildings, but they were getting him to understand at least the basics. 

He scratches the back of his head, debating whether or not he should get up and do some katas to take his mind off the burn in his gut when he notices a lump on Jiraiya's pillow. It's snoring. He stands and moves to the bed, drawing back the blanket to reveal Gamatatsu drooling on Jiraiya's pillow. He pokes the toad in the stomach. 

"You're a really bad babysitter, y'know," he says, voice still raspy. "You shouldn't fall asleep on the job."

Gamatatsu whines and kicks at Naruto's hand. Naruto swipes his hand back before the hit can connect; Gamatatsu is kind of ditzy, but he's the kind that forgets how strong he is. 

"Go back to bed," the yellow toad groans. "Jiraiya will be back soon and then I'll have to go back to sleeping on lily pads instead of real beds."

Naruto puts his hands on his hips, eyebrow raised at the toad. 

"Where'd he go?" 

Gamatatsu waves one of his little arms. 

"To meet a princess and her bodyguard."

Naruto scoffs at that. Jiraiya was a spymaster, and he had all sorts of contacts. But when he was going out on a run, it wasn't like him to give up that kind of detail, even if it was a lie. Usually, he just told Naruto he was going 'out'. The mention of a princess and her bodyguard make Naruto raise an eyebrow. 

"Oh yeah?" he asks. "Who's this princess?"

Gamatatsu buries his face in the pillow. Naruto pulls him back by his little blue jacket. 

"I don't _knooooww_ ," he whines. "Some pink haired medic girl. He thinks she's Akatsuki but her bodyguard's a Hyūga so he's gone to find out who they are and what they want. Put me  _down_ _Narutoooo_ , I wanna go to _sleeeeep._ "

Naruto drops Gamatatsu like the yellow toad is on fire. 

It couldn't be. Absolutely not. 

Before he throws on his clothes and his hitai-ate, Naruto tries to reason with himself. There are probably thousands of people in the world with pink hair. Any number of them could've been Akatsuki members. But there were only so many Hyūga, and every last one of them was loyal to Konoha. 

He tells himself that he's only going to practice his stealth, to observe. He doesn't have the right attitude to be a spymaster, so it'll be like shadowing his mentor while he's in action. 

He tells himself he's been chasing after one teammate for as long as he can remember. It shouldn't be all that different now, chasing after two.

* * *

They are halfway to the Fire Country border when Neji tenses beside her. Sakura looks to him, concerned. His Byakugan wasn't activated in an attempt to conserve his strength before they arrived in Kusa to whatever awaited them there. They didn't know if they were the only ones trailing Utakata, so it was a safer bet to stay charged while they could so that if things came down to a fight, they'd be able to defend.

"Neji?" she asks. 

He shakes his head and shakes two fingers forward to tell her to keep moving. She nods, and continues on. She can hear the sound of him slowing down, stopping at one point. Then there is a pulse of chakra and a poof; the telltale signs of summoning. Sakura looks back over her shoulder just in time to see a falcon lift off of Neji's outstretched arm. He catches up with her not too long after that. 

"I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier," he says. "Hiroshiki can scout ahead. He'll circle back and alert us of anything closer to the border that we should be wary of."

Sakura gives him a wary nod; summons drained at anyone's chakra with consistent use. Hiroshiki was small though, the size of an actual falcon. Unlike toads or slugs, which usually came from their regions much larger than their cousins in the human dimension, a hawk of Hiroshiki's size wasn't likely to be a large drain on Neji's reserves. In fact, it would probably be less of a drain than having his Byakugan active as they went along. 

The border with Sound is tempting, but Sakura has places to be. There would be time to right Orochimaru's wrongs, to ask Sango's aid in removing the hideous seal on Sasuke's throat, and on the throats of whatever other innocents Orochimaru had corrupted. That time would come later, not now. 

But her eyes catch the way a slim black garden snake seems to flash its scales every once in a while. It's been following them since Neji summoned Hiroshiki. The extra output of chakra must have encouraged some kind of inspection. 

Sakura has little fear of snakes. She did as a child, and it was exacerbated with Orochimaru's meddling in the Forest of Death. But slugs could beat snakes in a fight according to mushi-ken, and Tsunade's war stories. The little bastards might make her stomach turn, but Sakura can spit Katsuyu's acid. A little thing like the one following her doesn't stand a chance. 

Besides, if she tried to kill it, she'd probably end up dragging a number of Oto border patrol shinobi down on her head. Today was very much not the day. 

A bird lets out a fierce caw, and Neji's eyes turn upwards. Sakura looks to him, raising an eyebrow. 

"There's another man coming up this way," he says. "Tall. Fifties. Long grey hair, red and green robes. He wears Myobuku on his face plate."

Sakura's eyes widen. Jiraiya. 

"How far?" she asks. 

"Not very far at all. If we stay this course, we'll meet him."

Wherever Jiraiya was, Naruto wasn't very far behind. Sakura hadn't planned on seeing them so soon. But meeting with Jiraiya would help many things move further along. Sakura was very new to being a shinobi unaffiliated with a hidden village; Jiraiya was an old hat at it. Besides, he was a spymaster and he had a contact within Akatsuki. That was information that Sakura desperately needed.

"Naruto?" she asks. 

Neji shakes his head. Sakura's stomach falls. She had hoped, perhaps naively, that she would get a chance to see him. A childish part of her wanted to show him all that she had become. A kunoichi, a chuunin, a medic, and an emissary; she had grown so much in three short years. 

And besides that, she missed him. 

"Right," she says, a bald faced attempt at hiding her disappointment.

Neji doesn't comment on it, and they move forward. She's suddenly very uncomfortable with the idea of the little black snake watching her converse with Jiraiya, but the borderlands are the borderlands. She moves subtly a couple more meters onto the Hot Springs Country side of the border. She doesn't see the snake from the corner of her eye anymore, and it makes her relax somewhat. 

Which turns out to be a mistake, because Jiraiya damn near comes out of nowhere. 

There are few trees to provide enough cover, and Sakura grits her teeth and marvels. There's a reason Jiraiya is one of the Sannin, beside her shishou. Though she can vaguely remember something about such deft invisibility being used to peep on women, she can appreciate its potential combat applications. She'd like to get her hands on a jutsu like that. 

They come to a stop some space away from him. Neji stays close to her side; they don't know why Jiraiya has sought them out, because he has obviously sought them out. He won't raise a hand to a Konoha shinobi, not while he's still helping Tsunade. But Sakura is another story altogether. 

"Jiraiya-san," Sakura says, inclining her head a bit. "What a surprise to see you."

He raises an eyebrow at her. There isn't a trace of humor in his face. His faceplate glints harshly in the morning light. Sakura swallows; great, so this won't be as easy as she was hoping it would be. 

"There aren't very many slug sages, so I find it hard to believe that she would willingly let you go," he says. "Your guard is either genuine or a very convincing fake. He's the only thing that lets me believe what I've heard of you is true."

The hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She hasn't done enough publicly for people to know that she is a slug sage. Only a pocket of people in Konoha know. Yugito doesn't know who she is, so she won't be able to tell. But somehow, Jiraiya knows. There's a reason he's been supplying Konoha with information on the world since the Sandaime's second reign; this was why.

"She let me go because I asked her to," Sakura replies, choosing her words carefully.

Jiraiya huffs at that.

"You left because they showed you something that made you need to leave," he says. "That much is true for all sages."

She wonders what he knows of Shikkotsu, of the forests many scions and of their few sages. Of Inoko, the first of them, and Hashirama, the last.

"She wouldn't have let me leave if I were a threat to her and what she loves," Sakura returns. "You know that."

Tsunade had learned a long time ago that the best place to keep an enemy was at your hip.

Jiraiya narrows his eyes at her. He knows she's right. But the fact that Tsunade hadn't put them into contact with one another meant something, and both of them knew it.

"We want to protect the same person," Sakura hedges, "and the same people. We both want the same thing that she wants."

He folds his arms across his chest. The movement makes Sakura tense. She jerks, involuntarily. Neji's hand at her lower back stops her. She notices then that he is standing only half a step in front of her. It's easy to miss and hard to notice, but he's placed himself just a little bit between her and Jiraiya. His Jūken would keep her safely in its range if Jiraiya attacked. 

Sakura relaxes. Jiraiya snorts. 

"Young love," he muses. 

Her face warms, but Jiraiya's face returns to seriousness. 

"She told me nothing of you," he says. 

"And I of you," she quickly replies. "But our allegiances should speak for themselves."

Jiraiya puts a thumb to his faceplate, smiling a grim smile. 

"My allegiance is there for all to see," he says. "You wear nothing like a nukenin."

And that - that much was true. She hadn't wanted to claim any place when she had first left for the sake of anonymity while she went about her work. That was working against her favor now. So Sakura activates her sage mode with a breath in and a breath out, and when she opens her eyes, she is as blind as she once was in the forest. 

"My allegiance is clear."

Summons did not offer sage mode to those they found unsuitable. Jiraiya knows this. The fact that despite Orochimaru's massive summons and incredible power, that he still did not show the signs of a sage in battle meant one of two things; either he was saving that power for a different battle, or the Hakuja Sennin did not find him worthy.

"Your power is clear," Jiraiya returns. "That does not make me trust you."

She watches the fuzzy-clear shape of him, of his chakra with her blind eyes. He is strong. He has to be, to have seen what he has seen. To survive whether others had perished. 

"She trusts me," Sakura says. "That will have to be enough for you."

She deactivates her sage mode as quickly as she activated it and watches as Jiraiya gives her an appraising glance. She shrugs one shoulder. 

"You have whatever task the toads gave you, and I have the task my slugs gave me," she explains. "Both of those tasks work in protecting her best interests."

She crosses her fist, lightly curved over her heart; the Konoha salute. 

"She is family to me, Jiraiya-san," she says. "I would harm her the same day you would."

Her words hang in the air for a moment before he asks, "What is your task?" 

"To restore balance."

"And what does that entail?"

Sakura rolls her shoulders back and prepares for the question this man will inevitably ask of her sanity. 

"Protecting the bijuu from Akatsuki, and ensuring their unmolested freedom."

He raises an eyebrow at her. 

"The jinchuuriki, you mean."

She shakes her head. There is no time here and now, to explain that the bijuu are the oldest creatures in the known world, as old as the land itself if not older. That being separated from the land has corrupted the world as they know it. 

Now she only says, "No. I do not."

Jiraiya hums at that. 

"An interesting goal," he says. His gaze goes cold. Sakura thinks of Naruto, and her heart hurts. 

"The jinchuuriki are not my enemy," she hastens to explain. "One of them was in need of my help after her beast was extracted from her. I saved her life and returned her to her home."

Jiraiya visibly balks at that; he has to have known about Yugito, if his contact in Akatsuki was giving him up to date information. He's bound to know that Yugito was captured, though how many people know about her survival is still up for debate. 

"I mean him no harm," she adds in a quieter voice. He rubs his chin, but says nothing. 

It is clear now, because of what she has done, that removing a bijuu from a jinchuuriki does not always mean death. Sakura had only partially healed Yugito; Katsuyu had done the rest. This must endear Jiraiya to her, knowing that if the nine tails is released, that she will not let Naruto die. 

"The Shodaime brought peace by sealing away the bijuu into their hosts," Jiraiya says. "You would be ruining - ,"

"It didn't work," she interrupts. 

That alone surprises him into silence. Sakura presses forward. 

"There have been two almost successive world wars despite the bijuu being contained," she presses. "Jinchuuriki do not guarantee peace. Resources guarantee peace. Food, water, shelter, education, these things guarantee peace. The constant grabs for power that every hidden village has made since the Founders Era has continued the fighting the Shodaime tried and  _failed_ to stop."

Neji presses his hand to her back to stop her. Sakura - can't quite stop herself. 

"The jinchuuriki leveled the playing field in terms of fire power. They didn't give Suna more land or more food. They didn't protect smaller villages or provinces. Removing the bijuu entirely from the hidden villages will bring about peace -,"

"You," Jiraiya says, interrupting her, "sound like you ought to be wearing a black cloak with red clouds."

Sakura's mouth dries at the implication. 

"I -," she stumbles, "I would  _never._ "

"World domination through the collection of tailed beasts," Jiraiya muses. "It sounds like you would."

Sakura shakes her head. 

"The bijuu are - they're nature itself! Storing them inside of human beings is sucking chakra out of the world! It's what's causing this imbalance, it's what caused all the wars, Uzumaki Mito placing the nine tails in herself doomed the world to -,"

Jiraiya puts up a hand. Sakura silences herself, then hates herself for it. Still, there is something considering in his gaze that lets Sakura know that something she has said has struck a cord. 

"She wouldn't send you out into the field unless she trusted you, so even if I don't trust your goals, I trust her." 

Sakura's stomach turns. Suddenly, she feels awkward and young in front of this man who has played this game for longer than she's been alive. She's a child. She's out of her depth. She's going to get herself and the people she loves killed.

"They have a statue," she says, desperately reaching for something, anything that will make him trust her, that will make him put his faith in her so she can protect the same people he's trying to keep safe. "That's how they extract the bijuu."

She thinks back to her vision in the slime, to how wrong the thing had looked, had  _felt._ She thinks back to her mission report to Tsunade, when her shishou told her Jiraiya had similar information. 

"I'm going to destroy it."

Her words change the air. The ends of Jiraiya's lips quirk up in something that isn't a smile, but isn't a grimace either. She knows what he knows, and they both want to do the same thing about it.

"That's something I can get behind."

It sends a flood of relief through her. She smiles a bit herself, she can't quite help it. They don't move closer to each other, but Jiraiya warms the slightest bit. He doesn't trust her, but he knows that her plan will protect Naruto. He may not agree with the bijuu being set free, but he will support destroying the one thing that aims to harm one of his precious people. 

"Alright, Shikkotsu, I'll tell you what," he says. "I'll let a friend of mine know that you're with her. He'll reach out to you in his own time. He's a little frigid, but he'll take good care of you."

Sakura nods. Hope fills her in a boisterous, excited way. This is going to save so much worry, so much concern and fear. Anyone Jiraiya threw at her would probably be an invaluable asset. 

"Thank you, Jiraiya-san."

He waves his hand at her, a deliberately casual action. There's a caw overhead, but Sakura ignores it in favor of the plans that she subconsciously begins to make. She wonders how this asset will help her on her travels, and what information they might be able to offer her. She wonders if he'll be someone she can meet in person, or if they'll only communicate by scraps of paper burned after reading. 

"No worries, Shikkotsu," he says. He raises an eyebrow at her and asks, "Is there anything else I oughta pass along to him?"

Sakura bites the inside of her cheek and thinks. The asset won't need to know about her work with the Nara and the Hatake, unless they are a Nara or a Hatake. But there was only one Hatake currently in the field, and the Nara weren't prone to taking deep cover missions as far as Sakura could tell. Though, they would be frighteningly good at them. 

"I'm sworn to heal whoever asks for my help," Sakura replies.

She doesn't miss the way Jiraiya's open expression seems aghast at the very thought. A promise like that was a good way to heal a shinobi that was a direct threat to someone that she was trying to protect. So far, Shigure and Masumi had been the only ones to take her up on her offer and that was only because Utakata had heard from Saiken about her bargain. 

Telling Jiraiya meant telling Jiraiya's asset, which potentially meant telling the world that the Godaime Hokage's apprentice was a nukenin that healed anyone for free. 

"Not many people know," she continues, "so if he asks for my assistance, I'll know who he is on sight."

"That's certainly one way to look at it," Jiraiya muses. He gives her a nod. "Alright, Shikkotsu. I'll take care of everything else on my end. You take care of everything on yours."

She's abruptly aware that she's told him a great deal about herself and he's given nothing in return. That's fine. Sakura doesn't need to know what he's planning; he's got Naruto at his hip for now, so there won't be much he can do until he drops Naruto back off in Konoha. His primary concerns were probably Akatsuki and Orochimaru, the two greatest threats to the village. Sakura was well aware she was probably far off the radar. 

"Word to the wise," he adds, jamming his thumb back at his forehead. "Wandering healers can get away with having no visible affiliation. Wandering shinobi can't."

It's a good way to get questions asked about whether or not she had a bounty on her head. She carried weapons, her clothes were fine and shinobi grade. Anyone who had ever interacted with a shinobi in their life would be able to tell. Besides, she was young. It was rarer still outside of Kiri for shinobi to leave their villages young, and to live so long after doing so. 

Another falcon cry comes from above. Sakura's eyes flick to heaven before back to Jiraiya. 

"Sakura," Neji murmurs, voice close to her ear. 

She nods, aware that whatever Hiroshiki is saying, it means it's time to go.

"I'll keep that in mind, Jiraiya-san," she says. "We're headed to Grass Country. Tell your asset that we can be met there."

Jiraiya nods his head.

"Sakura," Neji presses.

"Can do, Shikkotsu," Jiraiya responds. 

Sakura takes a step backwards into Neji, shifting her weight and preparing to take off. 

"Please, Jiraiya-san," she says, "my name is -,"

"Sakura-chan!"

Her eyes go wide. She knows that voice. She would know it anywhere. In a hospital, on a training ground, across a battlefield and more. He's a flash of orange and black and morning light and a smile that would split anyone else's jaw open. And she can't stop herself from opening her arms when Naruto barrels into her. 

* * *

When he gets her in his arms, the beast inside of him quiets immediately.

Naruto thought he had known how insistent the demon inside of him could be. He's rarely had moments of complete silence in his mind. The fox was always clawing at him, both desperate to be released and filled with rage at being bound.

But now, the monster is silent.

She's different now, he can see it. Her hair is long; longer than it's been in years, since the exams. It's done up but Naruto can tell it's as long as it was when they were academy students.

She isn't wearing red anymore. She's wearing green, a bright sunny green long sleeved shirt and tan cargo pants with so many pockets Naruto can only guess at what she keeps in all of them.  

She's - she's pretty. Pretty in a different way than she was when he left. Sakura was a cute girl when they were twelve. Now they're fifteen and Sakura is lovely. He holds her away from him so he can see more of her. He marvels at the ponytail at the top of her head, reminiscent of Ino's, and the way her bangs frame her face. There's a smudge of something like make up on her forehead, but Naruto can just barely see something purple beneath it. Maybe a bruise?

Abruptly, he stops looking at her forehead, remembering her childhood anxiety about it. Instead, he looks at her eyes. She's tearing up. 

"Naruto," she breathes. He beams at her. 

"Do I look that different, Sakura-chan?" he asks.

She takes a deep breath, and looks him over. Naruto flushes a bit in the collar of his orange and black jacket, and scratches the back of his head.

"Did I surprise you with how ugly I've gotten?" he asks, pulling a couple of funny faces, if only to get the tears out of her eyes. 

"You're so tall," is what she says instead. 

Naruto blinks in surprise, then gives her a cheeky grin, one full of teeth. It makes her smile. 

"I hit a  _huge_ growth spurt while I was on the road with the Pervy Sage," he says, jerking a thumb at his mentor. 

Sakura laughs a little and says, "I can tell. You look good, Naruto."

Naruto beams and stuffs his hands in his pockets. 

"Aw, Sakura-chan, you're too nice," he says, kicking at the dirt. "You look good, too."

Sakura blinks, and her ears go a little red. Naruto's jaw drops just the barest bit because,  _what?_ He can't ever remember making Sakura flush with anything other than rage or irritation or embarrassment or laughter since before he left. 

It's - incredible. 

"Thank you," she says, ears still red. 

Naruto looks away, because dear god, Sakura's always been cute, but now she's older and impossibly cuter and she's blushing and it's  _his fault,_ which is wild in and of itself. 

He gives Neji (who is also just as pretty as he was the last time Naruto saw him, and _wow_ , this is so unfair) a jaunty wave from where he's standing just behind Sakura. Neji gives him a polite nod, but tilts his ear upwards when a harsh bird cry pierces the air around them.

"You aren’t supposed to follow me when I go out on a lead, kid. You know that," Jiraiya drawls, arms crossed over his chest.

Naruto shrugs.

"Yeah well, I couldn't sleep," he replies. "When I woke up and you were gone, I asked Gamatatsu where you went and he told me."

Jiraiya pinches the bridge of his nose and grumbles something about the bright yellow baby of the toad family. Naruto bounces on his toes and looks back at Sakura and Neji.

"You two on a mission?" Naruto asks.

Sakura shrugs one shoulder, but it doesn't look casual or easy. She looks like she's trying to be casual. Naruto's known Sakura through their academy years, through Wave, and the Chuunin Exams, and through losing Sasuke. They're friends. And it may have been three years since they've seen each other, but he knows what she looks like when she's trying to lie but she doesn't want to.

She's been making that 'casual' face at Sasuke too long for it to work on Naruto now.

He looks at her, really looks at her. And then he notices that she's not wearing her hitai-ate.

There were shinobi, like Jiraiya who didn't wear their hitai-ate constantly or very visibly. But Jiraiya was an unaffiliated shinobi, for however much he cared for the village. And Konoha shinobi - they didn't just not wear their forehead protectors. Even Sandaime had worn his on his battle armor, and kage rarely ever wore forehead protectors. For kage, they were redundant.

Naruto is wearing one. Neji is wearing one. Sakura isn't.

"Hey, Sakura-chan," he says, peering at the top of her head where she wore her forehead protector before. "Where's your hitai-ate?"

She rolls her lips in to bite at them both. At the corner of his eye, Naruto can see Neji just faintly tense up. Naruto looks over to Jiraiya; he shakes his head.  

Abruptly, he figures out why Sakura looks so pretty now. Pretty the way Sasuke always was, the way Neji was then and is now, too. 

She looks capable. Like she could take him in a fight. She holds whatever newfound power or techniques well in the lines of her body; she's more muscled, she looks hardened, disciplined. Different from how they were when they were academy brats together. 

The realization that she has changed so much makes Naruto's stomach drop. She's stunning now, but she's just as out of reach as Sasuke is. 

"Sakura-chan," he says, "did you lose it? Because I'm sure baa-chan will get you a new one."

But shinobi do not lose their hitai-ate. Even those who leave their villages still mark them, still wear them to show who they stand against. Even the unaffiliated, those like Jiraiya, even they claim who has their loyalty. 

Only people like Orochimaru do not. 

Sakura looks sad, and Naruto always hated it when she got that look on her face. 

"Naruto," she breathes. "Naruto, I wanted to tell you myself before anyone else could."

His fingers curl into fists before he can stop himself. He doesn't want to accuse her of anything, doesn't want to call her a traitor because he knows Sakura, he  _knows_ her heart, and she would never in her life do something like this. 

He had thought the same of Sasuke once. 

"What did you want to tell me?"

He's angry. He notices it absently. But instead of reaching up towards his anger, the beast inside of him is only quiet. 

Sakura takes in a deep breath, but she steps just a little bit away from him. That hurts. Naruto doesn't flinch, but he knows that Sakura knows that it's made him uncomfortable. 

"I became the Godaime's apprentice, Naruto," she says. And there is pride in her voice, a pride that makes Naruto want to congratulate her. 

He knows Tsunade is tough, is vicious in combat. But she's also one of the best people Naruto's ever known. And in a roundabout way, she's his family. If Tsunade trained Sakura, that means Tsunade has to know that Sakura's out in the field without her hitai-ate, right?

"I contracted with her summons, the slugs of Shikkotsu Forest," she explains. "I became a slug sage."

The information makes Naruto's jaw drop just the barest bit. He had made his contract with the toads ages ago, but he was nowhere near a toad sage. He looks from Sakura to Jiraiya, fully aware that the two of them are on a more even playing field in terms of power. Naruto has the Kyuubi, but Sakura - Sakura has something else entirely. 

"And in return for my senjutsu, I made a promise to the slugs of the forest."

"A promise that made you abandon our village?"

He can't help the way it comes out. He's upset and he's hurt and he's thinking too fast, faster than Sakura can explain things to him. The look on her face is solid, resolute. She doesn't look sad. She doesn't look apathetic. 

In his heart, he knows that Sakura isn't like Sasuke. Knows that something as petty as a grab for power wouldn't be enough to drag her out of the place they both loved. But Naruto can't explain the impossible thing happening in front of him, and he doesn't want to call Sakura a nukenin, so he's stuck between that and his rage. 

"I didn't abandon anyone," Sakura says in that collected way she does, like when she's trying to teach him something. "The Godaime released me from my vows. She  _let_ me go. The promise I made to the slugs is in the best interest of the village. She wouldn't have let me leave otherwise."

He looks at Neji, whose eyes are resting squarely on Sakura. 

"Neji is here under her orders, Naruto," she presses. "He's my bodyguard. He's helping me help the village."

Naruto takes a half step away from her, but Sakura doesn't almost flinch like he did. She's still, terribly so. It makes his stomach clench. 

"So you're like Pervy Sage," he murmurs. Helping the village from the shadows. Protecting what she loved by acting freely outside of it. 

Sakura nods. It floods him with relief. His stiffened posture relaxes, and in turn, so does Sakura's. Neji looks at him and gives him a little nod as well. 

Naruto wasn't aware of the severity of whatever bargain Jiraiya had made with the toads of the mountain, but it must have been serious. Seeing Sakura, who he's never known as anything other than loyal and fiercely protective, he knows that her bargain must have been steep. 

He doesn't like it, this idea that Sakura is no longer a shinobi of Konohagakure. He doesn't like that when he returns home, she won't be there to welcome him. But if Naruto's learned anything on his travels with Jiraiya, it's that there are many ways to protect the people you love. 

"What did you promise them, Sakura-chan?" he asks. 

She gives him a little smile and replies, "That I'd save the world. Or try to."

She laughs as she says it, and Naruto can't help but laugh in return. It sounds ridiculous, sounds impossible. He knows that there are strange forces at work in the world, forces that cause wars and continue famines. The idea that Sakura alone has sworn to solve those problems seems - it seems like something he would do. 

"That's a bit more intense than being Hokage, Sakura-chan."

That startles a real laugh out of her, and the sound is the same as he remembers it. A sweet, throaty noise. When they were younger and he vacillated between his crush on Sasuke and his crush on her, Naruto counted it a victory, every time he could make Sakura laugh. The way she looks now, like she is worried that he is angry with her, it makes him want to make her laugh again. 

"A little," she replies. 

"Okay," he says. "Okay."

Sakura looks at him for a good moment, searching his face for something.

"You're not mad?"

Naruto's eyes widen and he shakes his head immediately. 

"I'm - I was a little mad at first," he replies. "I might still be. Mostly I'm confused." 

He reaches for her hands. She gives them to him hesitantly. He notices the fingerless black gloves she's wearing, and the way the fingers on her right hand are puckered with scar tissue. That was different. 

"But I know baa-chan," he says. "And I know you. So I'm gonna try to understand."

He gives her hands a little squeeze, and she squeezes back. Hard. 

"Ah, Sakura-chan," he says. "You might break something."

She jumps a little at that and drops her grip before carefully examining his palms to make sure she hasn't done any damage.

"You're more like baa-chan that you realize," he says, teasing her.

Sakura raises an eyebrow at him as green chakra coats her palm, and she assesses the state of Naruto's hands.

"I hope you know that's a compliment," she replies haughtily. But there's humor there, and the tension that hung heavy over their conversation is much less oppressive than it had been before.

A bird caws above them, and Neji places his hand on Sakura's shoulder. 

"The path ahead is clear," he says. "We should move forward, before the day gets long."

Sakura looks at him over her shoulder and nods. She turns back to Naruto and gives his hands a more gentle squeeze. She opens her mouth to speak, but then she's tugging him in and hugging him with a tenderness she hasn't shown to him in years. 

He wraps his arms slowly around her, surprised. She smells faintly of peaches. 

"Good luck, Hokage-sama," she whispers to him. 

He laughs at that, and gives her a little squeeze. 

"Good luck yourself," he replies. Then, more solemnly, "Be careful out there."

She nods against him, then claps him hard on the back. 

"You too."

They separate and Sakura steps in neatly at Neji's side. She inclines her head politely to Jiraiya. Then, she and Neji are running. 

"Jiraiya," Naruto says, watching as Sakura and Neji disappear into the horizon. 

"Hm?"

There will be time to ask Jiraiya what he spoke with Sakura about. About her bargain with Shikkotsu, and what it entailed. Time for him to parcel out the truth from the little she had told him, and whatever she had told Jiraiya. Now, Naruto purses his lips as he watches the pair slowly wink out of his eye line. 

"What does it take to become a toad sage?"

* * *

It had taken everything in her not to tag him with a seal, but she didn't have Sango on hand and she wasn't a fuinjutsu expert in her own right. And besides, Jiraiya wouldn't have stood for a seal on his charge.

She appreciates the fact that Neji doesn't try to comfort her. She doesn't know if she'd be able to handle it right now. 

Naruto had almost called her a traitor. Had all but called her a traitor. It had been just as bad as Ino's initial reaction, when Sakura told her that she was planning on leaving. 

And of course it was. Ino and Naruto had their fearsome loyalty in common. Of course it would rub Naruto the wrong way, the fact that Sakura was no longer a part of their village of origin. But as soon as this was over - as soon as the bijuu were free, and the jinchuuriki were living and healthy, Sakura knew she would go home. 

It was a far way off. It wouldn't happen for years, maybe. But eventually, she would get there. Her bargain with the Hatake and the Nara spirits would have to bring her back to Konohagakure. And if Kakashi never married and sired children, or if he never adopted, then the care of the ōkami would fall solely on Sakura's shoulders. 

There was a place in Konoha for her, waiting for her to return home. It would have to be patient.

* * *

It takes days. Grueling days wherein Neji has to remind her to rest, to eat, to take care of herself. Her dreams are filled with half visions of Utakata's back, his pale blue coat. She feels like he's just out of her reach, because he is. And that infuriates her.

It might have been faster to cut straight through three other nations to get to Kusa, but it was too dangerous for Neji to do as a Konoha shinobi without a mission that justified his trespassing. While Sakura is grateful to have him at her side, is plenty happy to have backup should she ever need it, Neji's clear fealty to the village is really slowing her down. 

It takes a little under a week to get to Grass Country, which makes it a month or so since she and Neji left Konoha for this trial. It makes her stomach clench. His time with her is running out and they both know it. There isn't much time to think about it now, so neither of them talk about it. 

They left their tenderness at Masumi's inn. Now they are brusque, professional. They have somewhere to be, and urgently. 

She gets more and more wired as they move forward. She doesn't know why she's so excitable, so jumpy. It's probably because it's taken a month of misdirection and following cold leads and detouring to save a life, and now, finally  _now_ she knows exactly where she's supposed to be going. And she's positive of it, absolutely sure, because Utakata left her the clue. She hopes absently that he hasn't moved along since then. It would be incredibly annoying to have to run across the elemental nations  _again_ because he changed his course. 

Neji has Hiroshiki scout the borderlands ahead of them. The bird is uniformly silent unless there are groups of more than two shinobi approaching them from the opposite direction. He caws when there are patrols that clock their coming and going, but they always take care to make camp on the Fire Country side of the borders. Neji's hitai-ate will keep border security off their tails, even if the sentries don't recognize Sakura. 

She pays little attention to the changes in weather and the changes in scenery. Even the lush shady trees that speckle the Waterfall Country border don't really catch her attention.

When the grass beneath her feet begins to shift from short to long, something in her clicks. She knows before her mind can supply the reason, and once the reason articulates itself, Sakura pumps chakra into her legs to push forward.

Her heart hammers hard in her chest, thumping against her sternum. Her blood is singing, screaming at her to move forward. She doesn't actually know where Utakata is, but once she crosses the border into Grass Country she knows it's only a matter of time until she finds him. 

She bites the skin of her lip and uses the blood to summon Sango. The pink slug pops into existence and immediately perks up when she sees the long grasses that rise up to Sakura's hips. 

"You're close by," Sango chirps, crawling up Sakura's foot to perch on her shoulder. "North. Move north. He's not in the village proper, he's in a province town outside of it." 

"Thank you, Sango-san," Sakura breathes. 

North means he's closer to Waterfall and Earth Country, which makes sense in a roundabout way. It was safer to stay near several borders than to stay in the heart of a nation. It was easier to lose a pursuer if crossing borders wasn't something they were willing to do.

Neji must hear her, because he puts his hands to his mouth and executes a perfect bird call, not unlike Hiroshiki's caws. The bird replies in kind from high above their heads and changes course.

It'll be good to have Hiroshiki around to tell them if Utakata is under threat. They had tried to conserve their strength for as long as possible by traveling hard and resting well, but now Sakura can't make herself slow down. Sango made the seal that was on Utakata's foot; Sakura was as good as at his side. 

She runs hard, runs herself ragged. Neji makes her slow down when they hit a small town maybe half an hour from their destination. They don't ask for directions, now when they have Sango.

"Food," he says. "Water. Sit here. I'll get you something."

He plants her on a public bench, and gives her shoulders a firm squeeze before he leaves. Sakura's breath comes quick through her mouth and chaps her lips, but Sango's slime cools her shoulders from where it seeps through her shirt. 

She gets a couple of stares for the pink slug perched on her. She's not in civilian country, but there are a couple of hitai-ate clad shinobi here and there that give her an assessing look. Sakura is suddenly aware that there's only one woman in the world called the Slug Princess, and she is not her. 

She does her best to ignore the stares, and wonders about Jiraiya's insistence on naming herself, on claiming her place of allegiance. She wonders if she's been wrong this whole time to work with her anonymity. It worked for her shishou and for Shizune, but then again, nobody who looked at Tsunade didn't know who she was. And she usually stayed in the massive Fire Country borders on her travels.

But now with the scattered handfuls of shinobi and aware civilians giving her calculated looks, she's pretty sure that she's been wrong. She has the money to commission something like a jacket or a face plate, but it'd put a dent in her funds. She had a years wages, plus what she had made before leaving for Shikkotsu; perhaps it was a necessary purchase.

A wealth of power coiled like a cat waiting to pounce stops her dead in her thoughts. She rarely ever feels strength that raw, and that carefully self contained. Tsunade was a person who had it, so were Jiraiya and Kakashi-sensei. Kurama's power inside of Naruto was more like something tamped down, muffled. But this is chakra like her shishou's; large, powerful, and perfectly under control.

Sakura's eyes snap across those around her. A burly blue skinned man gives a little grin when she catches his eye, but Sakura can't focus on anything other than the red clouds intricately placed on his black cloak. 

She wants to vomit. 

She can't fight here, not around civilians and other shinobi. She needs to find Neji and she needs to run. She needs to lead this Akatsuki member away from Utakata; there was only one person he could have possibly been in Grass Country to find, and it had to be the same person Sakura was after. 

She stands abruptly, but the blue skinned man follows. Sakura bites the inside of her cheek. She needs back up, but she can't lead him to Neji. Akatsuki was a threat to all hidden villages, but this guy - Sakura wasn't sure of his name, but she was sure he was Uchiha Itachi's partner. He had attacked Konoha shinobi before (had attacked Sasuke and Naruto and Kakashi-sensei, the people she loved, the people she _knew_ ); he was an enemy of the state, and Neji would have to engage if he was able. 

Neji was a jounin. He was more than able to at least put a scratch on an Akatsuki member. 

Sakura walks in the opposite direction of where Neji headed. She has Sango on her shoulder. Sango's combat abilities were limited to her fuinjutsu and her ability to read thoughts via skin to skin contact. She didn't have a canvas for her fuinjutsu other than Sakura's body, and Sakura didn't want to get too close to the blue shark man to read his thoughts. 

She swallows hard and moves further through the town until the people start to thin out. She'll need space if she's going to crack the ground with her fists, and she doesn't want to risk getting acid on civilian stores or wares. If he wanted a fight, then he could have one. 

"How long are you gonna walk before you turn around and face me, pinky?" 

Sakura bites the inside of her cheek harder, already irritated. She really shouldn't be so easily riled up. But she's always had a temper, and having Tsunade for a teacher definitely didn't help. It wasn't like 'pinky' wasn't a common nickname; it was her most obvious identifying trait. But him knowing that she was running from him - that rankled her nerves. 

She turns on her heel and faces him, eyes narrowed. Sango curls her tail around Sakura's neck so she has a stronger perch. 

The man is much more frightening up close. He looms over her, and his teeth are sharp, filed to a point where he grins at her. There are peculiar gill like markings on his face, and his eyes are dark. He's got a Kiri forehead protector, and Sakura wonders if he's someone who could help her bring Yugara back to himself. Every Kiri nukenin left for the same reason. This one probably had a stake in the village's revival. 

She shoves the thought away as soon as it pops into her mind. Now isn't the time. She'd have Utakata's help with that. Maybe Han and Rōshi as well, if she was lucky. 

"Your name, stranger," she demands, injecting as much of her shishou's kage voice into her own. 

The shark man's grin becomes a chuckle. He inclines his head to her and says, "Of course. Where are my manners? Hoshigaki Kisame, at your service."

Sakura narrows her eyes and eases one foot just behind her. It'll help her pivot to run, or she can use it to launch herself forward to attack. Kisame notices, and arches an eyebrow at her.

"And your name, stranger?"

"Even nukenin don't follow shinobi whose names they don't know," Sakura says, narrowing her own eyes. She squares her shoulders, feeling brave if only because she's emulating the bravest woman she knows. "Tell me what you think my name is, Hoshigaki Kisame."

Kisame's laugh is throaty and loud; it shocks Sakura when it comes out. It sets her on edge; the people who laugh before a fight are always more terrifying than the people who are stony faced and level headed. The difference between Lee and Sasuke when they were younger illustrated that beautifully; Sasuke was good, but Lee walked into a fight drunk and damn near won.

Attitude was everything. And in a profession where one expected stoicism, a smile was terrifying.

"Wow, pinky," Kisame says, still laughing at her. " _Excuse me_ for not passing charm school."

He reaches back to the hilt of the massive sword on his back; Sakura immediately tenses. 

"You talk pretty big for a kid the size of my thumb," he says. 

A crow caws. Sakura doesn't look up because instinct tells her to keep her eyes on that sword. She isn't fast, but she's mean in a fight. The man was huge, but size wasn't an indicator of speed, not in this line of work. She isn't sure she can get in close enough to disarm him, but she might be able to get close enough to spit acid in his eyes or at least to break a couple of his bones. 

"Why are you following me, Hoshigaki Kisame?" she asks. 

The crow lands on the man's shoulder. It caws again. Kisame shrugs the shoulder the crow is on, but the bird hangs on. It bobs awkwardly. Sakura is reminded of Sango perched on her shoulders. She starts focusing chakra around her fists and lower arms to reinforce them, and a small amount to her legs for the leap forward she's about to make. 

"Are you Sakura of Shikkotsu?" 

It's strange to hear her name like this. Not Haruno Sakura. Not even as a shinobi, a chuunin of Konohagakure. But as a scion of Shikkotsu Forest. 

She nods warily. "I am."

"Sworn to heal all those who ask for your aid?"

Sakura is really beginning to regret that part of her bargain. 

"I am that Sakura of Shikkotsu," she says. 

Kisame smiles at her, and the expression makes Sakura feel like she's falling.

"I have a friend who wants your help."

* * *

He leads her through the province town away from the central market where Neji had dropped her off. He's bound to be looking for her by now, but Sakura doesn't want him to be anywhere near Kisame or his 'friend'. She thinks to send one of Nao's clones to him, or to send Sango, but Sakura isn't sure if she'll need to fight her way out of wherever Kisame is taking her. Besides, Hiroshiki has probably already seen her go.

He takes her to a small inn. The crow still bobs on his shoulder as they go.

"After you," he says with a toothy smile, waving her up the stairs. 

She doesn't like the idea of having him at her back, but she knows she doesn't have a choice. She rises up the stairs and walks down the hallway. She keeps her breath purposely even. It's a good thing that she does, because if Kisame's chakra felt like a coiled animal waiting to strike, Uchiha Itachi's feels like a wildfire that is only moments away from swallowing her whole. 

It's how she recognizes the room he and Kisame are staying in. She stops in front of Room 17. It's the last on the hallway, which makes sense. Shinobi paranoia persevered even when picking rooms. 

She stops in front of the door. She's suddenly grateful for Sango's soft body and the way it curls around her neck; it'd deflect an attack. 

As she lifts her fist to knock, a voice from within beckons, "Please come in."

It's weird. Sakura never thought Uchiha Itachi would have such manners. 

The room is plain, and he is sitting on one twin bed. His cloak is wrapped around him, but he has one hand just out of it, resting on the buttons. 

Sakura has heard nightmarish stories about Uchiha Itachi for as long as she can remember. Right now, she is standing in front of the man that Sasuke wants to kill. The man who killed an entire clan, full of experienced, weathered shinobi in one night. The most legendary traitor to Konohagakure, second only perhaps to Orochimaru. 

There's no way he could have known who she was. Nobody knew who she was. The few Konoha shinobi who knew wouldn't tell. But the only ones outside of them who could were Jiraiya and Naruto. And though Kisame had known her name and had known her oath, he wasn't the one who was _asking_ to be healed. Which meant - 

"He's got a cough," Kisame says as he closes the door behind her. 

His movement jostles her further into the room. She takes a couple of steps forward to steady herself and looks between him and Itachi. 

He's Jiraiya's contact. 

"How long have you had the cough, Uchiha-san?" 

She tries to put on her medic voice, her best behavior with problem patients. She doesn't have time to figure out how this has happened, how one of the greatest traitors to Konoha is feeding information to her as well. How Jiraiya had a problem trusting  _her_ when  _Uchiha Itachi_ is his informant.

"Some years now, Sakura-san," he replies. 

She takes her gloves off and tucks them into her one pocket, then reaches into another for the small bottle of hand sanitizer she has there. She telegraphs her movements clearly, unwilling to get impaled by an international criminal. 

"Is it associated with any other symptoms?"

"Other chest pains," he says promptly. "Migraines as well."

"Weight loss," Kisame provides from behind them both. 

Sakura nods and approaches Itachi. Her steps are slow and she brings up her hands so that they're exactly where he can see them. 

"I'll need you to remove your coat so that I can perform a diagnostic jutsu on your chest and back, Uchiha-san. Do you understand?" 

He looks at her with something almost like humor in his gaze. But he nods. 

"Of course, Sakura-san."

He takes off the offending garment and he folds it before placing it on the bed beside him. Sakura calls up a diagnostic jutsu and her hands begin to glow a soft green. 

"No funny stuff, pinky," Kisame says, reaching for his enormous sword. 

The crow on his shoulder squawks in protest. 

"Kisame," Itachi says calmly, "you'll break a lamp."

Sakura has no idea what parallel universe she's just fallen into. 

"I'll be placing my hands on your back first, Uchiha-san."

It crosses her mind that if she were a Konoha shinobi, healing him would make her a traitor. The idea sticks, harassing her as she approaches him. 

She doesn't want to do this. She doesn’t want to treat him with kindness or respect. He doesn’t deserve it.

But Sakura swore an oath to Shikkotsu, and the risk of breaking it is too great. She swallows her pride thickly and does her best to silence the voice in her head that sounds terribly like Ino, demanding she stop what she’s doing at once.

"Of course, Sakura-san."

She’s about to heal a demon.

He's still stiff, coiled and ready to pounce. It doesn't surprise her. If she makes even one false move, she doubts she'll even have a chance to defend. Uchiha Itachi beat Kakashi-sensei in a fight; Sakura has brute strength, but she's not the fastest shinobi this side of the border. 

She presses her hands carefully onto Itachi's back and closes her eyes. It's cancer, that much she can tell. Violently exacerbated by being a shinobi, by being a mission nin. It hasn't begun to block his airways yet, but it's in the lining of his right lung moreso than his left. It hasn't spread to other parts of his body, thankfully, but the masses in his lungs are of a size that disturbs her. 

It's bad, but it's not incurable. It'd put any shinobi weaker than him in a hospital. He's strong, she'll give him that, but the cancer will get stronger every day if he isn't careful. His chakra reserves are already smaller than she anticipated. His chakra itself is incredibly resilient, but there isn't a great deal of it and his reserves are exhausted from his immune system dipping into them to keep him alive.

He needs a healing and a minor transplant. 

"When was the last time you saw a medic for your condition, Uchiha-san?" 

"It has been quite some time, Sakura-san."

She looks up at Kisame, who's hand remains on the hilt of his sword. 

"Country doctors," he says. "Back alley cats when we get the chance. Nobody like you, Godaime's apprentice. Not ever."

He bares his teeth in that threatening smile of his. Sakura scowls; it's starting to lose it's horrifying quality. 

"I'll be touching your chest now, Uchiha-san," she says. 

"Of course, Sakura-san."

He responds like Kakashi does. At least he remembers how to behave with medics. He's easier to handle than Kakashi, and most other shinobi of his caliber. It's peculiar to think that an S-ranked missing nin is on his best behavior for her sake. 

It must mean something to him, that she's been trained by the Godaime. It was enough to mean something to anyone. 

The front of his chest gives her better access to the masses in his lungs; they're pressed towards the front of his body. She can't heal cancer in a day, or even in several days, but she can give his immune system a boost. She can break down the size of the masses and encourage his immune system to get rid of them. It would be easier to just open his chest cavity and cut them out with her bare hands, but she didn't have the equipment. 

It was possible to break down the masses and draw them out of his lungs up and through his mouth. But that would be painful. And it was generally a bad idea. It'd have to be the long way. 

"Lay down on your stomach, Uchiha-san."

She moves off the bed so he has space. Kisame comes closer, bearing down over her shoulder, watching her every move. Sakura places one palm on Sango. She gives Sakura's neck a little squeeze; she's gonna be the eyes on the back of her head, warning her if Kisame makes a move that Sakura doesn't sense coming. 

"You have lung cancer. I'm going reduce the size of the masses in your lungs, Uchiha-san. Then, I'm going to bolster your immune system to finish the work. It should stave off more masses from growing. Do you understand?"

"I do, Sakura-san."

He lays down easily. She places her green Mystic Palm on Itachi's chest, closes her eyes and concentrates. Absently, she can hear Hiroshiki screech. 

"Kisame," Itachi says. "Distract her guard."

Sakura tenses. A distraction didn't mean an assassination, but it also meant Kisame would be leaving the two of them to speak candidly. 

Kisame doesn't like the instruction. Sakura can tell by the way he tenses. Few people trusted medics; it was easy for someone with an aptitude of medical ninjutsu to destroy the body a breath after they attempt to heal it. 

Itachi's eyes cut to his partner, and he raises his brow a fraction.

"Don't insult me," he says blithely. "Go."

Kisame narrows his eyes. He looks to Sakura and bares his mean teeth at her. Sakura nods brusquely at him, and immediately goes back to Itachi, valiantly ignoring the nationalism in her that screeches for Itachi’s blood. She will keep her word as a medic and as Shikkotsu’s emissary. This power is to be shared, this chakra is to be distributed and so she must.

When she thinks about it like she’s on a mission, and healing the enemy is the cost of protecting her friends, it becomes easier. Ino’s voice in her head insists that she’s only buying time for a mass murderer. That by extending his life, she’s reducing Naruto’s.

Ino rages on; She places her hands on his chest and gets to work. As the door shuts behind Kisame, Sakura concentrates on the masses in his chest. 

She's worried about Neji, but she knows he can handle himself. She uses her chakra to lance at the masses growing in Itachi's lungs, making the pieces of it small enough for Itachi's immune system to handle on its own. His breathing becomes a little ragged as she does so, but she murmurs platitudes to calm him. 

There was a mass in each lung, and she lances them down into sixteen pieces each. It's a quick procedure, only taking three hours but it's spartan field medicine. The masses might grow back, but Sakura works her chakra deep into Itachi's exhausted immune system. Chakra transplants are dangerous to say the least. No two people's chakra vibrate at the same frequency, and it takes incredible control to match one person's chakra to another's. 

Itachi's chakra moves the opposite of the way he does; it moves like a rabbit's heartbeat.  She minutely tries to speed her chakra up to match it when something ridiculous occurs to her. 

It would be a very bad idea to kill her Akatsuki contact, she knows. But Itachi's chakra has the same movement pattern as nature chakra, if not somewhat slower. The senjutsu chakra she already had stored inside of her was nature chakra slowed down minutely by her own chakra being combined with it. It'd be easier to match with Itachi's frequency. 

She takes a breath and activates the senjutsu Byakugō on her forehead. The senjutsu stored in her bones was too important to waste on a non combat situation. The seal unfurls down her forehead and over her cheeks, wrapping around her throat and shoulders. 

"This might be unpleasant, Uchiha-san." 

He makes no sign of having heard her. The senjutsu chakra coats her hands in a pale purple glow. She concentrates so hard beads of sweat form on her forehead. One rolls down onto her nose, and it takes several minutes of working but the senjutsu chakra aligns with Itachi's as if it only needed a little bit of coaxing to do so. 

Once it does, the chakra does the rest of the work. It immediately bolsters Itachi's failing immune system. It coils up within his reserves, almost frighteningly compatible with what's already there. She only has to nudge it towards his lungs for it to focus and begin attacking the small masses that she's left for it to destroy. 

It's literally a medical miracle. Sakura's pretty sure no one's ever used senjutsu chakra to heal before. But the law of the natural world was give and take. Nature chakra was difficult to access, and it tended to do what it wanted, but it conformed to the natural laws. Not only that, but it _wanted_ to be used. When Sakura suggested that it heal, it wanted to heal. 

She takes her hands back to herself and closes off her Byakguō and her connection to that chakra. She runs a diagnostic with her own chakra to make sure the senjutsu chakra is still functioning with Itachi's, encouraging his immune system and softening the wear on his small reserves. Because the senjutsu chakra is strengthening his immune system, it was unlikely that it would turn on itself. Unlikely, but not impossible. All chakra was descended from nature chakra, so it was  _probably_ fine. 

Not to mention the fact that leaving your chakra in someone's system was akin to what pulpy novels called 'soul bonds'. The nature chakra was blended well with Sakura's, and was now blended well with Itachi's. Despite his weakened system, Itachi's fluttery chakra had resolved well with the senjutsu chakra. She wasn't worried, but regular check ups would be a good idea.

 _'A check up with a missing nin,'_ she thinks, taking her hands back to herself and rubbing them over her face. 

She takes her gloves out of her pocket and slides them back on.

"I took care of as much of the cancer as I could," she said.

"I bolstered your immune system with senjutsu chakra. Your body responded very well to treatment. You'll need at least semi-regular check ups, preferably with, um," she adjusts her gloves on her hands, feeling so incredibly awkward, "preferably with me."

Itachi nods. Sakura takes a couple of steps back so that she can rise. She walks over to the door, and sticks her hand into her weapons pouch. She pulls out a roll of the homemade seals Tenten had given her and Neji, and slams one for silence on the wall. She gives it a single pulse of her chakra, then turns back to Itachi.

"So you're him?" she asks, anxiety crawling up her spine. 

Itachi presses a hand to his chest and looks up at her through his long dark bangs. 

"If you mean that I am Jiraiya-sama's contact in Akatsuki, then yes, I am."

Sakura swallows hard and leaves her hands at her sides. She notes the honorific, and files that information away for later puzzlement. 

"I won't pretend to know or understand your motivations," she says, "but I'm working against your organization's goals."

"You will find, Sakura-san, that I am as well."

Sakura wants to ask how harming Konoha shinobi is helping him destroy Akatsuki. She bites her tongue.  

"If I may ask, how do you plan to use the information that I will be providing for you?" 

She narrows her eyes. 

"I plan to protect balance, and the world." 

Itachi narrows his eyes the barest bit at her and folds his hands neatly in his lap. 

"A lofty goal."

Sakura rolls her eyes.

"I get that a lot."

She folds her arms across her chest.

"And what is your goal, Uchiha-san?"

He gives her a look, but doesn't answer. She wasn't expecting as much. She's new in this game that he and Jiraiya have been playing.

"I need everything you've told Jiraiya-sama. I need to know your movements, which teams are going after which bijuu and when. I need to know when and how and why."

He raises an eyebrow. 

"You've been gone from your teammate three hours, and now you want everything that I know?"

Sakura grinds her teeth. 

"It's an exchange, Uchiha-san," she says. "My expertise for yours. I know how this works."

Itachi begins to shrug his cloak on. 

"I wonder if you do."

When he has the cloak on, he presses his hand to his chest, assessing his own health. It's peculiar, but Sakura can tell he's already breathing easier. There was something in his diagnostic that sat wrong with her, something about his eyes, but that was intense medical ninjutsu and believe it or not, fighting cancer was easier than potentially fucking up a Sharingan. 

"Kisame won't bother your teammate until I give him a sign to," Itachi says. "He suspects that you'll attack me anyway. He knows Konoha shinobi are - emotional."

 _'That's rich_ ,' Ino's voice sneers in her mind, ' _coming from the man who slaughtered children to test himself!'_

"My point," he continues, "is that we have time to speak, but your partner might find us before then. I am concerned there is no way for me to tell you all that you need to know." 

"There is," Sango says from her perch on Sakura's shoulder.

Itachi's gaze falls on the slug, and Sakura feels abruptly protective. She raises a hand to Sango's soft back.

"Clasp arms," Sango says. "I will take care of the rest."

Sakura looks at Itachi. He seems wary, but he lets her walk towards him. She crouches in front of him and offers her arm. Itachi takes hers and holds her by the forearm in an old Founders Era show of trust. Sango slithers down her shoulder and wraps herself around their joined arms.

Itachi's Sharingan flares to life. Sakura looks up at him, but in the same moment she can see every memory associated with Akatsuki in his mind. She sees Amegakure, a man whose name she knows is Pein and a woman called Konan. She sees members, an even number, all partners with specific goals. She sees the statue, and knows that it's called the Gedo Mazo.

There are thoughts of her - no, his partner but Sango filters out those thoughts and focuses tightly on the way the Gedo works. It can be summoned at will, with an extraordinary amount of chakra. It explained the way Matatabi had been extracted in the wild.

Simultaneously, Sakura can feel her thoughts of Shikkotsu dredged up. She feels herself in the Sage Pool, remembers how she scarred her hand. Remembers swearing herself to the forest, to Onyomi and Saiken and the world. She remembers what she saw in her visions; even the moment when she saw Itachi himself, questioning the identity of a man called Tobi. 

And then the thoughts are over and Sakura and Itachi are left holding onto each other as Sango crawls back up her shoulder. 

"If it were a genjutsu I would be able to mimic it," Itachi says looking down at their joined arms with his red eyes, "but I cannot."

Sakura's mind is spinning with the fact that Uchiha Itachi now literally knows nearly every thought she's never had about Shikkotsu. It makes her stomach turn, to have someone know those thoughts. But she's seen inside Uchiha Itachi's mind, too. It's a form of intimacy that she is not entirely comfortable with.

Itachi watches Sango crawl up her shoulder and settle there.

"Your summons are very useful," he says, giving her an appraising look. He knows Sango's power now, which is - upsetting. It's not something he can use against her, but it's a leg up on her. That and the fact that she began to cure his cancer. 

"Mine are as well."

He forms the seals and summons a single crow. It caws and settles on Itachi's shoulder. 

"This is Jirou," he says. "Memorize her appearance. She will bring messages to you from me, and she can ferry messages back as well."

Sakura narrows her eyes at the crow, watches the way it moves. She's small, around Hiroshiki's size. There's a scar on her beak the shape of a lightning bolt. Sakura nods at her and Jirou bobs her head back. 

She hears Hiroshiki screech again, and the sound makes her jump. She hasn't had a good conversation with Itachi, and she isn't sure of where he falls in terms of loyalty. She's not really sure she wants to find out. 

"Time to go, Sakura-san," he says. 

She turns to him, lips pursed. 

"Put on a good show, hm?"

Sakura's eyebrows raise and before she can even think to defend, a kick sends her through the door and into the hallway.

* * *

Hoshigaki Kisame lives up to his name. Truly, he's a tailed beast without a tail. 

Neji already is a close range fighter. His taijutsu is prime because he's a Hyūga and it has to be. He uses chakra for the Jūken to block the tenketsu of others, but Hoshigaki Kisame is a deft fighter. He wields his ridiculous sword like an extension of his arm, and Neji has to do his best to defend. 

He doesn't trust the sword, so he does his best to keep his hands from touching it. From Kisame's massive chakra reserves, it wouldn't matter how many of his tenketsu Neji blocks, he'll still be able to swing on him. 

He knows that Sakura is in the hotel only a street away. Hiroshiki had been guiding him there when this man had stepped into the way to stop him. She had been missing for hours, but Hiroshiki had gotten into a fight with a crow and his injuries needed tending to even while he looked for Sakura. He had only been able to begin locating her with his hawk’s clues before he realized he was being followed by Hoshigaki Kisame. Now, he's pressing Neji back, bringing the fighting closer to the marketplace. 

There's a terrible crash from the hotel that catches Nej's attention, and he sees a flash of pink hair retreating from a black cloak. Neji's stomach clenches hard. He knows that Sakura can defend herself. But Neji is struggling against his own opponent, and he doesn't want to think about how she's faring on her own. 

He starts a spin for the Revolving Heaven technique, hoping to at least get the man off his back when a flurry of bubbles slip between him and his opponent. They crowd in close to Kisame, who swipes to dispel them but they pop in a flurry of bright white and yellow light. It gives Neji enough time to leap back.

He hears the sound of earth shattering makes him double his distance from his enemy. Sakura's missed a kick at her target, but she's let it connect with the earth. It drives a fissure in the ground; she's being careful not to destroy the surrounding area for the sake of the civilians who have to live there. Itachi is faster than her, but when Sakura goes in for a taijutsu fight the blows that she glances off Itachi are enough to break bones. 

Behind Kisame, Neji can see the same bubbles separate Sakura and Uchiha Itachi. He watches as a single bubble grows, floating towards Kisame's face but the shinobi somehow sees through the bright lights. He swings his massive sword to slice through the jutsu, but he's just occupied enough to give Neji enough time to look around for his rescuer. 

A tall man, with short brown hair and bright yellow eyes has a pipe in his mouth and he manipulates the bubbles with his raised hands. And Neji knows who he is, knows before there's any time to ask. 

Neji turns back to the fray, and takes the initiative. Utakata's bubbles are still hounding Kisame, and it gives Neji just enough time to start jamming the tenketsu around his stomach. He hears Sakura let out a battle cry, and it gives him a well of courage. She's still yelling. She's still fighting. She's just fine. 

Kisame brings down his sword towards his head, but Utakata's bubbles begin sticking towards Kisame's sword arm. It takes several of them, but with time they begin to slow him down. 

"It's good to see you, too, Utakata," Kisame shouts. "It's been a while!"

Neji ducks in close, shutting the tenketsu around Kisame's upper chest. He doesn't think about the fact that Kisame has fought the jinchuuriki before, or at least that they were peers at one point. 

But Kisame is a tailed beast without a tail, and it isn't long before he somehow manages to get the range of movement back in his sword arm. Neji is just below him, and there isn't enough time to move. He's going to fall under the blade because Kisame is faster and stronger than him, and he hasn't felt this helpless since he was a genin fighting against an Oto shinobi for Uchiha Sasuke's sake.

Then, there's a moment where he's wrenched through space and time and before he knows it, he's facing Uchiha Itachi. He turns his head for a fraction of a second; Sakura's veins are purple and her hands are clasped on either side of Hoshigaki Kisame's falling sword. 

She used a kawarimi. 

Kisame gives a throaty laugh and says something about Sakura's personality, but now Neji is facing the first traitor of the Uchiha clan. He keeps his eyes low on the Uchiha's feet; Hyūga skill with dispelling genjutsu or not, he's not willing to hedge his bets on his abilities to get out of a Sharingan hallucination. 

Itachi is a skilled hand to hand fighter; he must have come against the Jūken before, because he matches Neji blow for blow as if it's easy. He manages to slam a palm onto the Uchiha's chest, but the man only disappears in a flutter of crows. Neji gets their feathers stuck between his fingers. The birds start cawing at him, swooping low to peck at his face and arms. He hears Hiroshiki screech and dive down low to aid him. 

He has to perform the Revolving Heaven technique to get the crows off of him. It propels them high into the air, but they begin to overwhelm the lone falcon that stands against them. Neji bites his thumb to summon aid for Hiroshiki, but a kunai glances off his hand and disrupts his seal making. 

He tugs kunai out of his own pouch and launches three at Itachi. He blocks them with his own knife, and Neji barrels in towards him. It becomes a knife fight, with them glancing blows off of each other. It's paranoia inducing; Tenten would be better in a fight like this.

The sound of metal scraping against metal mingles with the sounds of fighting birds overhead. Itachi launches the kunai at Neji's face, and he dodges it by a hair. It glances off his cheek as he moves to the left, but the Uchiha's foot is suddenly connecting with his head. 

He dodged left and ran straight into a kick that makes him see stars for a second.

Neji grunts but follows the momentum of the kick. He lets it lead him naturally into a Revolving Heaven rotation, but Itachi sends shuriken for his feet, guessing the path of his rotation and putting weapons in the way before he can get fully moving. Neji spares a moment to curse the Uchiha and their damn eyes. 

He sticks his hand into his pocket and reaches for a flash bang; Utakata's bubbles had worked similarly, and they had been a decent distraction. He launches it at the Uchiha, but a volley of flaming shuriken meet it. The flash bang goes up in a flurry of light and sound that would blind anyone. Uchiha Itachi dives directly into the light to bear down on Neji with a series of strikes that he can barely block.

He lets out a burst of chakra from his tenketsu to push the Uchiha back, and it gives him a moments long opening to jab at his shoulders. Chakra block around the arms was deadly, as most elemental ninjutsu used the tenketsu of the arms to channel and shape chakra. It wouldn't make Itachi a less skilled taijutsu fighter, but it would keep him from making any more crow clones or setting shuriken on fire.

The burst of chakra puts the Uchiha on the defensive and Neji goes in hard. He knows that the Uchiha is a katon user because all Uchiha are, so he goes for a suiton just to be safe. He forms the seals for the Heavenly Weeping technique, and spits water shaped senbon at the Uchiha's face and eyes.

He predictably calls up a Great Fireball to turn the needles to steam, but several of the needles break through anyway. Neji throws four kunai from his pouch as soon as the fireball begins to weaken in size. A huge stream of water from Utakata drowns the rest of the fireball, but stops as Kisame focuses on him instead of Sakura.

Neji turns his attention back to Itachi, trying to form a plan of action when the impossible happens. His opponent stops moving. 

"Kisame."

A cool voice pierces through the din of Utakata crafting jutsu, and the birds screeching in the sky above. Neji watches as bubbles pop against Kisame's face and hands; they begin to dissolve his Akatsuki cloak. He smiles in a sinister way; he's holding one of Sakura's fists in his palm and his massive blue fist dwarfs her smaller white one. She's grunting with the effort of the attack, but he hasn't crushed her fist and she hasn't pulled back. 

She launches another fist at his stomach and he lets it connect if only to bring down his sword at Sakura's impossibly small arm. She tries to rear back, but Kisame won't let go of her other fist. With the fist that punched his stomach, Sakura grabs his cloak and tugs him in close so he can't bring the strike down to break her arm. It's a good move, but Kisame responds by lifting her by the fist he's still holding and flinging her away from him.

She hits the ground hard and rolls. Neji can't leave his own opponent unattended, but his instincts are screaming at him to do something. Hiroshiki is still battling the crows alone, and Utakata's bubbles are beginning to coalesce around the Akatsuki members. 

Kisame wipes at his cloak where Sakura had bunched up the fabric and gives a huffy sigh.

"You ruin all the fun, Itachi."

He lifts his sword onto his shoulder and turns to put his gaze on his teammate. 

"These odds are not in our favor," Itachi says. 

Kisame huffs. 

"Speak for yourself."

He backs off, though. Moves until he's beside Itachi. Sakura gets to her feet, a little wobbly, and it takes all Neji has not to follow in close to her. If they decide to attack again, it'll be better to be fanned out so that he and Utaka can come in on different angles. But Itachi and Kisame make no move to attack Sakura while she stands by herself, and in a moment, the two of them shushin so quickly it makes Neji's stomach drop. The crows abruptly end their fight with Hiroshiki, and they scatter into nothing.

That wasn't a fight. That was barely an exhibition match. They were messing with him and Sakura. They weren't taking this fight seriously until Utakata arrived. 

"Well then," says Utakata. 

Neji turns to him but he looks at Sakura as she jogs over to meet them. Utakata raises his eyebrow at her, but gives her a wry grin. 

"Hey cousin," he says. "Took you long enough."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so theres … no indication really of how long it takes to get anywhere in this godforsaken universe! so we're just gonna say it took maybe about two weeks for sakura and neji to get to yuga, then they detoured to save yugito, THEN they spent those two days with masumi at the inn. so we're about a month into the timeline. i hope that makes sense? if this note creates a continuity error w my own damn canon let me know so i can fudge it to the best of my ability; kishi does that and i'll be damned if i can't do it too!
> 
> the yugara revival/redemption arc is happening soon! how fun and wild! get ready to meet revolutionary mei! ao and neji are gonna have …. fun :-))))) i haven't actually decided if kisame will have anything to do with it but i'm amenable to suggestions on what exactly i oughta do with him
> 
> that fight scene …. was very hard to write. i wanted to include EVERYONE but oh man was it DIFFICULT. i hope y'all enjoyed it!!! please lemme know if i made any grammatical/spelling errors; this chapter was my longest one to date for this fic and i don't doubt that in my editing i missed something.
> 
> my show closes this weekend! how sad! it was fun, and i'm happy it's over because now i have a week to REST before my next show starts rehearsal!!! 
> 
> comments are fooooood for starving artists and xx see y'all next time!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So we go to Kiri," Utakata says, shoulders straightening.
> 
> "We free Yagura and Isobu from this illusion," Sakura adds. 
> 
> "And maybe start a revolution on the way," Utakata finishes, eyes glittering with promise.

The black racer winds its way up the leg of his desk and curls at the center. It speaks in halting whispers, in snake-tongue. A strange girl at the border, with a Hyūga guard. Showed no intention of crossing the border to retrieve Sasuke despite the Hyūga's hitai-ate. They weren't doing intel either. They were only passing through.

Peculiar for a Konoha shinobi. Kinsei describes the pink haired girl, and the way that her eyes gleamed blind. A sage. A slug sage. The Godaime's apprentice. Chummy with the nine-tails jinchuuriki. Sworn to heal all those to asked for her aid, and to plant herself directly in Akatsuki's line of fire. How incredibly fascinating.

Tsunade's Byakugō could almost ensure immortality. But the power of a slug sage had not been seen since Senju Hashirama. 

Orochimaru is very interested indeed. 

* * *

 "You two sure know how to make an entrance," Utakata says, lifting his gaze over their battlefield.

Sakura swallows thickly, unsure but also excited. 

Utakata is here. In front of her. After weeks of travel and frayed nerves and detours, here he is. Whole, alive, and in front of her. She doesn't quite know what to say. He's exactly what she expected him to be. Dark haired, golden eyed, dressed - formally in an informal way. 

She feels excited. Incredibly excited. It bubbles up from within her, coiling and happy, thrumming, thrumming until it threatens to overtake her. Abruptly, Sakura realizes that her excitement is not only her own. 

It's Onyomi's. And Nao's. And Mitsuru's and Katsuyu's, and Susumu, Sango, Shigeo, Chie, and Fudo's, and every single slug in Shikkotsu Forest. All of them, she can feel all of them through the blood in her contract, through Nao's chakra on her forehead, filled with joy. 

Because their mother is folded into the seal in Utakata's stomach. Nao and Mitsuru and Katsuyu's mother, yes, but also Onyomi's sister. Onyomi's twin; the second half of his self. 

There is a part of Shikkotsu in front of Sakura, and her heart feels as full as the last time she was in the forest herself. 

Utakata's gaze softens on her, and Sakura is aware that he feels it, too. That Saiken recognizes her and what she means, standing there. Because Sakura is Saiken's daughter, too, as much as Utakata is Onyomi's son. 

He reaches out to her, a single arm. Sakura stumbles over herself to take it. His forearm beneath her skin leaves the taste of summer sweet slime in her mouth, of leaves brushing against her face as she walked her first miles through the forest, blind. 

Their gazes are soft on one another, and Sakura doesn't hesitate. She drags him in for a fierce hug, holding him tightly around his middle, her fists rumpling the fabric on his back. She can feel Saiken's chakra in Utakata straining against the seal, wanting to meet her in the flesh. Sakura laughs, a little wet sound, overcome with the joy she feels from the forest intermingling with her own. 

"You're more a sister than a cousin, aren't you?" Utakata says. 

It makes Sakura pull back a little bit to face him. He's a little thin, but not from lack of food, that much she can tell. His kimono is too big on him, probably purposely, to make him look weak in a fight, or to encourage sweet little old couples in the borderlands to offer him a place to stay. 

"Technically," Sakura replies, a smile quirking up at the edge of her lips. 

Onyomi and Saiken are one mind, one spirit, one energy, even though they are divided. Which, granted, made the other jinchuuriki and their bijuu Sakura's cousins. But she and Utakata had the same parent. Siblings it was. 

"Well come on, imouto," Utakata says, laying one hand on the top of her head to ruffle the hair there. "You and your boyfriend, too. We've gotta go before the authorities arrive."

He says 'authorities' with a joking look in his eye, and Sakura can already tell she's going to like her big brother. 

Utakata nods, and leads them away from the destruction. He dodges into corner alleys and down beaten footpaths, straying away from the primary traffic of the sleepy town. 

Neji follows at the rear, a firm presence. It doesn't take them long to arrive at the little cottage Utakata calls his home. It's sparsely decorated, mostly empty, but it's clean and it lets the light in. 

"You never struck me as the settled down type," Sakura says as Utakata welcomes them inside. 

Utakata snorts, sticking his bubble pipe between his teeth as he prepares tea and a snack for them. 

"You never struck me as the take-on-two-Akatsuki type," he replies. 

Sakura ducks her head, feeling strange. She hadn't won her fight, hadn't even come close. She had managed to land a decent number of hits on Hoshigaki Kisame, but he had managed to get a good grip on her and to throw her around like a rag doll.

She had instinctively started using the chakra stored in her bones to lessen her fall, but shame had guided her back to standing, and fury at the prospect of losing a fight. 

She had seen the way Itachi had looked at his partner, and the way Kisame had fussed over his. Though their dynamic was as particular as their organization, Sakura could recognize something like what she and Neji had in what Itachi and Kisame shared. Itachi was her ally now; she hadn't wanted to hurt someone close to him. 

Which was bullshit, because Hoshigaki hadn't had even batted an eye at the prospect of hurting her. She would have been better off fighting Itachi as he had initiated, but the sight of that awful shark skin sword coming down on Neji's back had made her hands form the seals for a kawarimi before she could even think about it. 

Doujutsu versus doujutsu was an even match. So was brute strength verses brute strength. Sakura had no doubt she could take the bastard again if she ever had to; if she activated any one of her seals, her chakra reserves would probably mimic exactly what his did naturally.

There was only the problem of that damned sword of his sucking in chakra; it was damn near impossible to disarm a swordsman as effective as Hoshigaki. Next time, she'd deck him in the face and see how his sword responded to that. 

"You feel alright?" Utakata asks. "You took a nasty fall there, and Saiken won't stop asking me about you."

Sakura blinks up at her brother, not in blood but in chakra and purpose, and smiles at him. 

"Tell her I'm just fine," she replies. "I'm tougher than I look."

Utakata nods, laying some cut apple slices on a plate. 

"That's only a little scary," he says. "You look plenty tough."

She can't help but smile under the praise as Utakata returns with an assortment of cut fruit, crackers, and tea. The three of them sit at the low table, Utakata politely serving them. 

"So," Utakata drawls, "was getting our asses kicked first thing in the morning part of the plan?"

Sakura snorts around a handful of grapes. Neji has a strawberry halfway to his mouth, and he grimaces somewhat at the question. 

"Not really," Sakura says. "That was uh, mostly my fault."

She looks at Neji haltingly, wondering if he's upset with her. It wouldn't be the first time she's wandered off, but she had left for so long in a foreign village with no promise of her return. She was a grown woman, capable of looking after herself, but she was also very aware of how seriously Neji was taking his position as her guard. Not to mention how protective he could get. After all, only days ago he had left his Byakugan on for hours while she healed a broken bone, if only to see that she was still alive while he waited in their hotel room. 

"Well nobody died, so I'm not too rattled," Utakata says.

He leans back onto his hands, bubble pipe between his fingers while he puts an orange slice into his mouth. 

"So," he begins again, inclining his head towards Neji, "who's this?"

Sakura looks from her brother to her - her Neji, and promptly almost chokes on the bit of apple she was currently trying to chew. 

"Shit, I have no manners," she blusters. "Utakata, this is Hyūga Neji. He's my bodyguard detail for the year while I, y'know. Try to fix everything."

"Bodyguard detail?" Utakata asks, looking suddenly mischievous. "That so?"

"And -," she adds, a little haltingly. "My boyfriend. Like you said. Earlier."

It makes the back of her neck hot with her blush. How ridiculous. Sakura just took on an S-ranked missing nin, just made herself an asset with  _another_ S-ranked missing nin, and somehow calling Neji her boyfriend makes her stomach twist in funny little knots. 

Because she's never really - called it that before. They haven't labelled anything; it's always been enough just knowing that the other is around. But that's what he is. Her boyfriend.

When she chances a glance at Neji, his eyes are studiously downward at his teacup. Sakura can just barely see through the long brown hair that falls over his shoulder, that he's blushing, too.

She wants to bury her face in her hands like an academy student that just made eye contact with their first crush. Studiously, she doesn't. Instead, she puts her left hand down at her side, and a handful of moments later, Neji's fingers brush against hers to take it. It makes her feel - satisfied, even through her mortification.

"How cute, imouto," Utakata says. "Pleasure to meet you Neji-kun. Guard my little sister well."

Neji nods once and says, "I will do what I can. She is very capable at guarding herself."

Sakura muffles her grin with a slice of peach.

"So," Utakata says again in that way of his, "do you have a plan?"

Sakura's grin turns feral.

"Oh, absolutely."

Utakata smiles and leans forward until his elbows are resting on the table.

"Tell me everything."

She explains what she knows through Itachi about the Gedō Mazō, about the members of Akatsuki that she had seen in his mind, and about the tailed beasts they already had under their control. Akatsuki members weren't privy to the mission parameters of the others in the organization, so Sakura can't say which beast will be targeted next or by whom, but it's safe to say that if they felt confident enough nabbing Yugito then the jinchuuriki currently leading Sunagakure was probably a safe bet.

"It's safe to say they won't move for Son Gokū or Kokuō until they've got the first three under control," Sakura says, twirling a toothpick that had once speared a strawberry. "Just in terms of raw power, they need to be sure they can handle the three tails before they go to the four, and so on."

"So Isobu's likely their next target," Utakata answers, his face shuttering.

There's something in the hard line of his face, the grief contorted there that Sakura can feel through the chakra they share. Saiken's chakra was Onyomi's, and in a strange way, Sakura could feel the way Utakata's mood had changed. Almost like feeling a hand just a couple of centimeters away from your arm.

"Utakata?" she asks.

He purses his lips, and twirls his pipe between his fingers. It's a fancy trick, but it's clearly a nervous habit.

"I was Kiri before I defected," he explains. "Yagura was a sweet kid before Isobu was placed in him. Was still sweet after that. We thought with him as Mizukage, the era of the Bloody Mist might end."

He huffs out an unhappy laugh, sticking his pipe back between his lips.

"Now look where we are," he finishes bitterly.

Sakura reaches out her free hand to cover Utakata's. He didn't know. Of course he didn't know, why would he have? She hadn't mentioned it yet, and Saiken didn't know so neither did Onyomi. They only knew that Isobu was isolated from them, but not the cause.

"The Sharingan can hypnotize tailed beasts as well as human beings, Utakata," she says softly.

His eyes narrow, then widen, and his pipe almost falls out of his mouth.

"There's an Uchiha in Akatsuki, and I have no doubt that this is their doing," she continues. "A destabilized Kiri means people within their borders that can't afford missions start hiring outside organizations. Ones like Akatsuki."

Utakata shuts his mouth with a click, and the grief in him tumbles in confusion and a light hint of rage.

"They've been using an unstable Kiri to line their pockets," Sakura goes on. "But all illusions can be broken, even Sharingan ones."

The look he gives her is something fearsome. Sakura doesn't know all of Utakata's history in his village, but shinobi rarely left their villages for trivial reasons. Especially not Kirigakure shinobi; the price of defection from that village was too high. 

Utakata, Hoshigaki Kisame, Haku and Zabuza, they were a precious handful of people who had managed to escape. And seeing the way Utakata has had to try not to flinch at mention of his former village, makes Sakura purse her lips in sympathy. 

"So we go to Kiri," Utakata says, shoulders straightening.

"We free Yagura and Isobu from this illusion," Sakura adds. 

"And maybe start a revolution on the way," Utakata finishes, eyes glittering with promise. 

It's the first time in a month that everything has felt possible. 

"We'll need some help with all of that," Utakata says, scratching the back of his head. 

His eyes track over the fruit plate, which they've mostly finished by now. 

"You don't mean - ?"

Utakata nods. 

"It's about time you met the rest of the family."

Sakura beams, she really can't help herself. She manages not to jump to her feet in excitement, because a caveat makes itself apparent. 

"Can you have more than one side-alongs?" she asks, brow furrowing. "That seems pretty dangerous."

Utakata lifts an eyebrow. 

"Who said anything about that?" he asks. "Call Sango since you're up. I'll get the supplies."

Utakata rises to his feet, and Sakura follows the direction. She summons Sango, who pops into existence. The slug is vibrating with her own excitement, and slips down Sakura's shoulders to dart over to where Utakata is gathering water and ink.

"Kata-kun!" Sango shouts. She lengthens in size until she's about the size of a fully grown man, and she winds her body all around Utakata, restricting his movements.

"Has it been that long, Sango-chan?" he asks, giving Sango's pink body an affectionate pat.

"It's been _ages_ ," Sango gushes. "You're so tall now!"

"That I am," he agrees.

He walks back to the sitting room with Sango piled upon his shoulders, looking incredibly dignified for a man with a slug on his back. He settles down, carefully setting out the instruments. He mixes the ink and water, carefully wiping some of Sango's guck off his shoulder and putting it into the bowl. He mixes it with one of the brushes he brought in with him. 

He produces a kunai from his thigh holster, and nicks his fingertip. Then he squeezes the blood into the bowl and mixes it in as well. 

"Imouto, if you would," he says, after wiping his blood off the blade and handing it to her. 

It occurs to her then, that he's mixing the ink for the seal on his foot. The same seal Sakura had placed on Yugito's foot. By overlaying it with his own blood, he was connecting it with his chakra, so that she'd be able to find him. 

It's - so peculiar, because Sakura knows that she's already done it to someone else. She gave the seal to Yugito in case the woman ever needed help, but Utakata is giving it to her now because now, they have a mission. 

She nicks the tip of her finger, and Utakata mixes in her blood. When he's satisfied, he pulls his foot into his own lap first, and traces over the seal Sango placed on it those years ago with the new concoction. It takes him less than a minute, following the intricate lines in perfect detail as he goes. 

When he's finished, he gestures to Sakura, who places her foot in his lap. His blood on her seal wouldn't give him and Yugito unfettered access to each other; blood had to be shared between those who wore the seal for those channels to open. 

It tickles, the way he applies the ink and water and slime and blood. But when he's finished, Sakura can feel the difference between her connection with Yugito and her connection with Utakata. She can distinguish them, can feel how far away they are from the intricate lines that carve across her foot. 

It doesn't escape her notice that Neji is not offered a similar seal. It would be dangerous to do so; they were about to go dispose the leader of a foreign government, and ferment revolution. Neji couldn't legally do that. Mostly because his Hokage hadn't thought to tell him to do it. He was on bodyguard detail, no more, no less. 

"Hyūga-kun," Utakata says, interrupting Sakura's train of thought. "Do you have any sealing paper?"

Neji nods, then sticks his hand in one of his pouches for his supply. He procures a roll of blank sealing paper, sent by Tenten with love, in case they ever had reason to make their own new seals depending on what came for them while they were out in the world. 

He hands a slim slice to Utakata, who begins mixing ink and water together in a second bowl. 

"I'll need a second one, Hyūga-kun, if you wouldn't mind," Utakata says, concentrating. "I'll need a bit of blood from you both as well."

Sakura does as she's told, and as she does, a wave of affection for Utakata overcomes her. Without Sango's slime, Neji wouldn't be connected to those related to Sango; he wouldn't be able to get to the jinchuuriki, but he would be able to get to her, and she to him. 

Utakata finishes them quickly and lets the seals dry on their paper. 

"Wrap them around a kunai hilt," Utakata says. "If you pump chakra into them, they'll take you to each other, but they're weak enough to be destroyed if it ever comes to that."

If one of them is captured, and the seal may be used to capture the other. Sakura takes her seal, and gently rolls it around a senbon. Then, she carefully pulls down her ponytail, and redoes her hair into a bun before sticking the senbon through it, like it's a tama kanzashi. Kunoichi in the Warring States Period always wore weapons in their hair; it feels like a proud tradition to her now. 

Neji does the unthinkable. He removes his hitai-ate, and lays the seal along the black cloth. He puts his forehead protector back on, the transportation seal pressed against the skin where his Caged Bird Seal used to be. 

It fills Sakura with an emotion so raw she thinks she might choke on it. 

"Alright, then," Utakata says. 

He gets to his feet, and goes to the door, retrieving everyone's shoes. Sakura looks down at the seal on her foot to avoid looking at Neji; if she looks at him, she just might cry or something equally as ridiculous. The seal on her foot is dry, and she takes her shoes gratefully when Utakata hands them to her.

"Let's see if Han and Rōshi feel like helping out," Utakata says, putting his own sandals on. "I'll warn you, Sōn and his jinchuuriki can both be bastards. They both don't want to admit that they like each other."

Sakura snorts at that, and gets easily to her feet. Neji follows not too long after. 

"First time's always the most difficult," Utakata instructs, "but you won't get spliced unless you think about it. I'll go on ahead, then you focus on my chakra, and let the seal take you wherever I am."

He pats Sango on his shoulders, and with a great dramatic sigh, she begins sliding down onto the floor. 

"It was good to see you, Sango-chan," he says to her. "Send my regards to everyone."

Sango rubs against his leg in another show of affection before saying, "Of course, Kata-kun. Everyone is going to be  _so_ jealous that I got to see you today. You, too, Sakura-chan."

Sakura rolls her eyes, knowing full well who the slug was really excited to say. Sango disappears with a pop, leaving the three shinobi on their own. 

"I'll see you on the other side," Utakata says with a wink. 

In the next moment, he is gone. 

Sakura takes a deep breath and focuses on the seal on her foot. Chakra and blood are one, and she can feel how far away Yugito is in Kumo. Utakata's chakra on her foot isn't uncertain as much as it is moving. When it stops, Sakura opens her eyes and reaches out an arm to Neji. 

"Hold onto me," she says. 

He steps neatly into her side, wrapping an arm around her waist while she does the same. Her grip on him is so tight it could be bruising. Then, with a burst of chakra, they are gone, too. 

* * *

Sai is an enormous pain in the ass. 

He's a fantastic long range fighter, his style more like Tenten's than she wants to admit. And he's good at what he does.  _Really_ good. The first time they try a combination attack where Sai's slim white hawks explode into a rain of Tenten's senbon, she can't help but whoop in victory when the weapons leave Gai and Lee dancing to keep out of their grasp. 

He's weird. Like, incredibly weird. His skin is so pale, he looks like he's spent his entire life underground. His smiles never reach his eyes, and he's unnervingly awkward in most social interactions. 

Tenten is willing to begrudge him that; all shinobi had their ways of coping. Gai and Lee were … exuberant. Hatake read porn in public. Ino bothered civilian women about village gossip when they came in for flowers from her family's shop. 

Sai, he mostly paints. Which isn't all that weird, to be honest. He's got a little journal that Tenten never bothers to look at, because she respects people's privacy, thank you very much. Besides, he only brings it out when he's waiting for team training to start. 

Gai and Lee are only ever late when they're training with each other, which roughly translates to some godawful task like running around the village border backwards on their hands  while blindfolded. Tenten is usually pretty punctual herself, only ever being late when she has to work. 

But today, she's early. No one else is in the clearing where Team Gai spars, so she sits down and tugs Shiranui Genma's tattered notebook out of her back pouch. She's only a handful of arrays away from reverse engineering the fuinjutsu he's given her. The notes in the notebook were a mess at best, but the seal arrays were tidy even if they were a bit cramped.

The seal was fine work once Tenten had figured out that the matrices for the cardinal directions didn't all point outward, but _in_ , converging at a single point: the user. The seal that she was trying to crack clearly wasn't made to be placed on the human body; no, it would do better in battle with a moving part and a static one.

Perhaps a kunai in the pouch and a kunai being used. That way, the user wouldn't replace himself with the kunai, as much as it gave them the power to jolt through space at an alarming rate because they had created fixed points with the kunai. 

It was incredible work, ingenious work. Tenten was chomping at the bit for the applications of it; figuring out how to safely tattoo the seal onto a person's body, or even to produce them at the scale to which every active duty shinobi over a certain rank could have them. They'd really come in handy for ANBU shinobi that needed quick escapes. 

Tenten looks over the red book in which she'd been taking her own notes on the fuinjutsu, double checking her notes on how the seal needed to be layered for the transportation to work. Her scrawl is much tidier than the 'N.M.' who had originated the jutsu. 

"Good afternoon," says a voice perilously close to her ear. 

Tenten ignores her gut reaction to stab whoever's gotten that close to her with a senbon through their cheek by half a second. The weapon is in her fist before she can stop herself, but she doesn't attack because she knows better. 

She shuts her red notebook with a decisive movement, then gives her new teammate the warmest smile she can manage despite the fact that he nearly scared the piss out of her. 

"Sai-san," Tenten greets. "You frightened me."

She puts the senbon back in the gauntlet on her forearm beneath her white sleeve. 

"I apologize, Tenten-san," he replies. "I have read that sometimes, it is appropriate to surprise your friends with your presence, so that they are happy to see you."

Tenten quirks a brow at that. 

"Most of your friends are shinobi, Sai-san," she says, not unkindly. "Surprising them might get you a knife to the neck."

Sai looks owlishly at her. 

"All of my friends are shinobi, Tenten-san," he replies. "Though you are right. I will alter my technique, then."

Tenten nods warily, still confused as Sai takes a seat beside her. 

"What is it that you are working on?" he asks. 

Tenten drums her fingers against her red notebook, suddenly feeling kind of cagey. Shiranui hadn't told her not to tell anyone about her task, but the fuinjutsu in his notebook had been so advanced it seemed like even breathing something about it to someone was a bad idea. Besides, there was no guarantee that the fuinjutsu would work. It was all very pretty sealing, but Tenten had yet to create one of Shiranui's seals herself and use one in a spar. 

She wouldn't have time to, not really. She was down to the last day of the two weeks Shiranui had given her for her project. She had been planning on finding him that day after training with her team. 

"A friend asked me to look over one of his potential new fuinjutsu," Tenten says levelly.

Few people in the village were good at fuinjutsu outside of the Uzushio quarter. It made sense that anyone outside of the quarter would want help with the nearly lost art form. 

"Ah," Sai says. "You are doing a favor for a friend."

She nods. 

"Yes, exactly."

"Is your friend doing you a favor in return?" 

Tenten purses her lips; Shiranui hadn't really offered her anything in return for cracking his (awesome, maybe impossible) fuinjutsu. He had kind of banked on the ridiculous nerdy that came with her being an Uzushio orphan; you couldn't put fuinjutsu in front of someone who understood it and not expect them to stumble over themselves to figure it out. 

"I don't think so," she answers. "He knew I was interested in this, so he asked me to help."

Sai tilts his head.  

"Isn't that manipulation?" he asks. "If he has asked you to do something for him because he knows that you enjoy it, but has offered you nothing in return, hasn't he cheated you in some way?"

And Tenten thought _Lee's_ grasp on social interactions was peculiar. At least Lee spoke in the language of challenges and youth; that was something Tenten had understood after excessive exposure to her teammate and their sensei. 

Sai? Sai just seemed lost as all hell. 

"Not really," Tenten says, choosing her words carefully. "My friend knows that I like fuinjutsu and understanding how they work. So him giving this to me was like giving me a puzzle to solve."

"A gift," Sai supplies. 

Tenten nods. 

"Exactly," she continues. "And I like helping my friends when they don't understand something that I do. That's what friends do for each other, make things easier."

Sai nods seriously at that, and pulls out that little black book of his to take notes. He did that often. Often enough that Tenten had noticed, but not often enough so that she felt the need to say anything.

She wondered who was in charge of Sai's social development; his lack of last name made Tenten think he was an orphan. She had only lived in the orphan's quarter for a little while before being claimed by her cousins. It wasn't a surprise that she had never seen him before. 

"Haven't you ever given someone something they liked because you knew they liked it?"

The question stumps him, and he puzzles over it for a while. It isn't until Gai and Lee arrive some fifteen minutes later that Sai looks at her and says, "No. I never have."

It's surprising, but it makes Tenten's heart fall out of her chest. Orphans were easy pickings for shinobi life; Sai was probably a civilian kid who showed some promise before someone sponsored him to get into the academy. After that - well, it was easy to see how he might've gotten sidetracked. 

Some people took the shinobi laws a little too seriously. It looked like Sai was one of those people. And so perhaps, was his genin sensei. 

Now that she thinks about it, Tenten isn't sure Sai's ever mentioned his genin team or his genin sensei. She had just sort of assumed he was in the year below her, like Ino and Sakura and the others were. Their graduating class had been much larger than the Rookie Nine, that was for sure. Tenten had no way of knowing every shinobi that was active in the village, that was way above her pay grade.

But she'd never seen him before. Not at the first Chuunin Exams she had taken part in. It was clear that Sai was their age, so he had to have been somewhere in there, hadn't he? Then again, she hadn't seen him at the Suna exams either, when she and the rest of the Eleven had been promoted. 

It was entirely possible that Sai had been field promoted to chuunin. It wasn't especially common outside of war, but there had been a number of field promotions for valor and tactical thinking during the Konoha Crush. It was possible that Sai was one of those promotions. 

Still. It doesn't sit right with her. And Tenten is a good enough kunoichi to know to always trust her gut. She doesn't quite trust Sai in the same way she doesn't trust a seal she doesn't recognize, or a wild animal that looks halfway between attack and retreat. 

It occurs to her then, weeks after Ino's first warning about being interrogated that maybe ROOT has decided to come at her from below instead of up front, like they did with Ino. 

The idea makes her blood run cold. When their group training is over, Tenten beats a hasty retreat with excuses about having to go see her cousins for lunch in the Uzushio quarter. She bolts not like a coward, but like a kunoichi too clever for her own good. 

She can't tell Ino immediately, but if she gets a measure of privacy, she can summon Susumu who could carry the message to Ino. That was her best bet. She heads to the quarter in case she's being followed, and from the way her hair stands up on the back of her neck, she's right to be so paranoid. 

Her apartment was safe, but Uzushio was full of retired shinobi and clever civilians alike. No one would be dumb enough to try her there. She picks up her pace a little bit, debating on whether or not she should take to the roofs when someone calls out her name. 

"Hey, Tenten! Kid, slow down!"

She does slow and turns her head over her shoulder. She nearly sighs in relief when she sees that it's Shiranui. 

"You're acting like you're being tailed, kid, calm down," he says. "We're in peacetime."

Tenten blows air up at her bangs. 

"You're the one following a shinobi in a village full of shinobi," she replies. "Better paranoid than dead, Gai-sensei always says."

Shiranui chuckles at that, his senbon bobbing in his mouth as he does. 

"He always does give practical advice, I'll give him that," he says. "I'm heading out on that mission tonight, did you manage to crack the seal?"

Tenten gives him a wry smirk. She can't help the way the pride darts up her spine. She's Uzushio, of course she cracked the seal. Fuinjutsu might as well have been written on her bones like it was on her foremothers, still buried in their native land. 

She produces her red notebook and Shiranui's from her back pocket and hands them both to him. 

"My notes are a bit neater so they'll be easier to read," she says. "Whoever wrote this has a really good grasp on, well,  _everything_ , if I'm being honest with you. The potential applications are kind of incredible."

Shiranui quirks up an eyebrow at that, stuffing his notebook into his weapons pouch and flicking through Tenten's red one. 

"Applications?" he asks. 

"Yeah," Tenten gushes, sidling up beside him. She flips a couple of pages until she gets to where her own ideas about the seal and its potential flourish over the neatly lined paper. 

"For people with higher pay grades, the seal could be tattooed onto them, so they have easy access back to the village. It could be tuned in with a single person's chakra too, so that it can't be used by enemy nin using a corpse as a key to the village, y'know?" 

Shiranui nods his head slowly, reading Tenten's notes. A moment passes in silence, before a grin curves over Shiranui's mouth and he shuts the book. 

"This is really clever stuff, kid," he says. "But I can't believe you've been pouring over this thing for a week and you still don't know the Hiraishin when you see it."

Tenten's jaw drops. The Hiraishin?  _The_ Hiraishin? The Flying Thunder God Technique, the one that the Niidaime developed, that the Yondaime used to devastating effectiveness in the Third War?  _That_ Hiraishin?

"Then 'N.M.' is  _Namikaze Minato_?" she asks. 

She had thought the Yondaime's handwriting was shitty. He's probably frowning at her in the afterlife. The  _Yondaime_ is probably frowning at her in the afterlife!

Shiranui laughs at her because that's just what her life has become, hasn't it?

"The one and only," he replies. "But that's beside the point. Godaime requests your presence as soon as possible. Meaning about five minutes ago."

Shiranui nods his head and Tenten knows to follow him. They pick up speed as they travel towards the tower, and Tenten tries valiantly not to look at the Yondaime's head on the monument. Good god, the answer to who had written such lovely complicated fuinjutsu had _literally_ been staring at her the entire time!

When they reach the tower, Shiranui slides in through a window into the Godaime's office. Tenten follows, pretty sure that if he does it first, he'll get the worst of the Godaime's wrath. 

"Shiranui," Tsunade says as Tenten shuts the window behind her. "I take it this means she passed?"

"With flying colors," the tokubetsu replies, lightly dropping both journals onto the Hokage's desk. "She's even thought up new applications for it aside from the kunai."

Shiranui takes a couple of steps back, and stuffs his hands in his pockets. He jerks his head again and Tenten comes to stand beside him. 

"Though I am a little concerned about her idea of putting the seal onto the body. Inanimate objects are one thing, but putting space-time fuinjutsu on a body seems like it might get messy."

"Not if your ink has the right composition," Tenten says, butting in because - well, she's already come this far critiquing the Yondaime, how much worse could it get?

Shiranui and Tsunade both look at her expectantly. Tenten swallows and starts talking. 

"Most seals work because ink is imbued with chakra, either directly or by blood. It becomes latent when the ink dries and active when chakra is applied to the seal, like with smoke bombs or silencing seals," she explains.

Her hands are feeling a little clammy with her nerves, but now that she's talking, she can't make herself stop.

"Blood is enough living material for storage and movement like the seals used to contain the Kyuubi, or for the Hiraishin. But for a seal that is moving an entire body itself from one physical place to another, there isn't enough chakra in blood to maintain the seal without it disintegrating. Otherwise, you need several people to perform a Hiraishin at once, or you risk burnout."

"And your solution to this is?" Tsunade asks. 

There's something like a twinkle in the Godaime's eye that tells Tenten they're on the exact same page. Shiranui looks curious to say the least. 

"A more organic material would need to be in the composition of the ink for the Hiraishin to be applied to human bodies," Tenten says. "Organic material charged with chakra. Like the slime of a Shikkotsu slug, for example."

Tsunade nods in approval and flips open a file on her desk, carefully moving Genma and Tenten's journals out of the way. 

"You think she can do it, Shiranui?" the Godaime asks, uncapping a pen and filling out a form. 

Shiranui shrugs, but he looks at Tenten through his periphery with a smile on his face. 

"I think Minato is pissing mad he didn't think of it first," he replies. 

"Mm," Tsunade says, her smile matching Genma's. "I think so, too."

Tenten has no idea what's going on. 

"Congratulations," Tsunade says, signing the paperwork with a flourish. "You've been nominated for a promotion to tokubetsu jounin with a registered fuinjutsu specialization."

She holds out the paperwork to Tenten with a jovial smile on her face.

"And now you've been promoted."

For the second time that day, Tenten's jaw drops. She reaches out to take the piece of paper, knowing she'll have to go and have it filed herself. She's a jounin now? A tokubetsu jounin?

"But who - ?"

Tsunade wags a finger.

"Nominations are anonymous," she says.

Tenten nods, looking back down at the paper in her hands. Just like that, she's been promoted. She had thought she would have to wait longer, have to do more but here it is, in her hands. Her cousins are going to flip _out_. Gai and Lee were going to cry for  _days._

"Shiranui and the Yondaime's former guard will be overseeing your work with modifying the Hiraishin," Tsunade says, her congratulatory smile turning abruptly wicked. "Congratulations on your three new shishou."

Tenten looks fro her Hokage to Shiranui, whose smirk is easy and confident.

"You're gonna do great, kid," he says. "Iwashi and Raidō are gonna love you."

A great big grin threatens to crack her face in half, but a sudden thought stops it in its tracks.

"But what about Team Gai, Tsunade-sama?" she asks. "Will I be taken off the team?"

The blonde woman shakes her head, leaning back in her seat.

"No," she replies. "You won't be taking missions with Shiranui and his team, you'll moreso be doing research and development with them. Consider it a part time job."

She should be embarrassed about the amount of relief that strikes her with the clarification. She had sincerely thought for a moment there, about declining the promotion if it meant leaving Gai and Lee behind. Neji, too. She couldn't just get promoted and go away while he was gone, could she? She wanted him to be there so she could rub it in his face.

With her promotion paperwork in her hands, Tenten bows deeply to her Hokage and says, "Thank you, Tsunade-sama, I won't let you down."

When she stands back up, she looks at Shiranui and a world of possibility blossoms in front of her.

"So, shishou," she says, "when do we get started?" 

* * *

Someone has sealed the bottom of her foot. 

It does not send Yugito into a panic because she is a grown kunoichi, and she knows better. Still, when she notices the seal, fear rises high and sickly in her throat.

How hadn't she noticed? How hadn't the hospital noticed? Was it left from Akatsuki? What was it there to do?

She isolates herself, because that is what cats do when they are injured. She is convinced she can figure it out on her own somehow. She is not a master of fuiinjutsu, but she knows the arrays of suicide seals and bijuu storage seals alike. She can tell the difference between a flash and a smoke bomb by the curl of the kanji written on them. 

This? Is none of those. 

It's a perfect circle, containing several other perfect circles. There are lines that curve out delicately, intricately overlaid in what could only be called a master's seal work. It takes Yugito's breath away, the beauty and the danger of it. It's stunning, but she has no idea what it does. 

She's been doing her rehabilitation exercises. She's been getting better with chokutō and katana, working furiously with kenjutsu until she is satisfied that she will not be discarded by A despite the fact that she is no longer a jinchuuriki. 

The exercises make her strong, and they help the meager chakra that is fumbling inside of her to get stronger. And it is only  because her chakra reserves are small, but still there, that Yugito notices the seal. 

It pulses once, and it sends a tickle from her heel up her spine. She runs into the bathroom, sits on the edge of the bathtub and brings her heel up in full view. There's something familiar about that pulse of chakra. Something almost recognizable. She knows she's felt it before, but she can't place where. 

And she's focusing so hard on what it is and where she knows it from, that her chakra focuses there too, working subconsciously down from her core into the seal to see if it can help her. 

When the seal activates, and Yugito is dragged through time and space, she doesn't make a sound. Doesn't even yelp in surprise. 

She's a grown kunoichi, and she knows better. 

* * *

Han is probably the politest man Sakura has ever met in her life. When she and Neji arrive shortly after Utakata, Han is returning from the kitchenette in their hotel room with a plate full of dango. 

"Hello, cousin," he says kindly, nodding at her and then at Neji. "Hyūga-kun. Please sit."

There are only two twin beds to sit on, so she and Neji take their place beside Utakata, whose got his elbows resting lightly on his knees. 

"Rōshi is getting ice," Han says. 

Sakura nods, taking a stick of dango as Han offers it to her. Her stomach feels a little strange after the travel, and the snack helps to settle it. 

"It's been so long since we've seen you, Utakata," Han says. "Are you well?"

Utakata hums his answer around a mouthful of sweets. 

"Better now that imouto figured out why Yagura went off the deep end," he says. 

Han, with his grey mask still covering his nose, looks to Sakura with consideration in his eyes. 

"How can we be of assistance?" he asks. 

Then the door opens and shuts in nearly the same motion, and a bright red haired man steps inside, bucket of ice held like a weapon in his hands. 

"Don't go offering our assistance without asking me first," Rōshi grumbles. 

"Why wouldn't we help?" Han asks. "I've told you what Kokuō-sama has told me."

Rōshi comes further into the room, and sets the ice down in the kitchenette. He's old enough to be Sakura's father, and that makes it a little easier to bear, the fact that he doesn't seem to want to help her. Help all of them. 

"Excuse me for not thinking running into a hidden village run by a Sharingan controlled jinchuuriki is a good idea," he huffs. 

"We'd be running in with three jinchuuriki ourselves," Utakata says to that, smirking. "Plus imouto."

"If you don't want to be a part of the fighting, that's fine," Sakura interjects.

The men in the room all look at her, expectant. This wily plan to save Yagura was her idea, but it's still strange to have so much attention on herself. 

"At least one of us needs to be far away from Kiri in case Akatsuki comes in to ruin the plan," she explains. "So all of us have a getaway."

"I'll be traveling with whoever stays behind," Neji adds, passing his unfinished dango to Sakura, who heartily bites into it. "I'm still a Konoha shinobi, so I can't be a part of an insurrection my Hokage doesn't tell me to be a part of. I can function as a guard for whoever doesn't go into Kiri."

She brushes her hand against his, grateful that they hadn't even need to have the conversation about him staying behind. She wasn't sure if she would be able to order him to do it. Having him volunteer is a lot easier on her nerves. 

"Utakata knows Kiri," Sakura begins, "so we use what he knows to get in, dispel the illusion, and we get right back out. We'll barely even start a whole revolution. Just a tiny one. Nobody will know we've been in or out."

"Then why exactly do three of us need to go?" Rōshi asks. 

Sakura levels him with a look. She's already been talked down to by one too many old men in the past two weeks; Jiraiya was plenty, and she doesn't want to deal with it from someone else, too. 

"Because w'ere shinobi," Sakura replies. "And someone _will_ know we've been in and out."

He holds her gaze for a steady couple of moments before he chuckles and starts filling glasses with ice. 

"Affiliated or not, you Konoha shinobi are all the same," he says. 

She wants to ask what in the world that means when Han sits down on the opposite bed. 

"I have Kokuō-sama's boil release," he says. "It can overpower most suiton techniques just by virtue of being able to turn the water into vapor I can manipulate. I will go with you to Kiri, and Rōshi will travel with Hyūga-kun."

Sakura looks to Neji to see his response, but he's only nodding in approval to the plan. A sudden tapping at the window makes all of them tense. 

Sakura turns first, fist already pulled back to knock an intruder off their feet, but she stops when she notices that the intruder is a crow. She narrows her eyes, peers at its beak, before she realizes it's Jirou, one of Itachi's summons. 

"Stand down," Sakura says, slowly rising. "She's here for me."

She gets to her feet and walks to the window, carefully opening it so that the crow can come inside. She offers it her arm, and it perches there. The bird peers at her with too intelligent eyes, then sweeps down and lands on her outstretched forearm. Its talons wrap carefully around her flesh, careful not to make her bleed. 

When she peers into its intelligent dark eyes, something like dread settles heavily in Sakura's stomach. There's no going back now. She's in league with a devil to get to the heart of hell, but there was no taking down Akatsuki without Uchiha Itachi's information.

It makes her stomach turn.

The crow cocks its head at her, blinking rapidly to catalogue her face. It caws once and begins hacking. At the base of its throat is a slim piece of paper wrapped in a thin film of plastic. Sakura extricates it at once, and the crow stays on her arm waiting for further instruction. 

Carefully, she unrolls the message, eyes taking in the content.

_The Kazekage within the month.  _

Sakura reads it once, then twice, then three times, if only to be sure that this is the only information on the little scroll. Then, she purses her lips and quickly forms the seals for a summoning. Then, she spits Katsuyu's acidic slime on the message and looks back at the shinobi in the room. 

"They'll be making a move for Gaara soon," she says. "So we might not have distractions in getting to Yagura."

"But it still leaves Gaara up against Akatsuki," Utakata grumbles, twirling his bubble pipe in his hands. 

"The Hyūga boy and I will head to Suna," Rōshi says, pouring water in each of the cups he's filled with ice. "When you finish in Kiri, come to us, and we can take care of the rest from there."

She hedges a smile at the older man, very aware of the fact that five heads are better than one. She's ready to dismiss Jirou when something catches in the back of her mind. 

Kiri shinobi knew Kiri best, and defected Kiri shinobi always had a pretty good reason for leaving. 

Sakura's got money in the bank, and even though the thought of giving it to Akatsuki makes her skin crawl, Hoshigaki Kisame would be a powerful ally. If she kept her name anonymous, just said she wanted a bodyguard detail into Kiri - perhaps that she wanted someone who could get her past Kiri security, then maybe?

It would bite her in the ass if he caught on to what they were doing, but Hoshigaki and Akatsuki had no cause to know what Sakura's goal was. And if she had extra cash on hand to keep Hoshigaki quiet, then it just might be able to work. 

Besides, if she commissions Hoshigaki privately and not as a member of Akatsuki, then she was only lining one bad man's pocket, wasn't she?

"Do you have a pen and some paper?" Sakura asks, turning her head to Han. 

He procures some from the bedside table, and Sakura scratches out a hasty note offering five hundred thousand ryo for Hoshigaki Kisame's services as an independent contractor for a five day bodyguard detail past the Kiri border. Once she was safely within the border, his mission was over. 

And if the three of them managed to kill Hoshigaki if he got suspicious or stepped out of line, then that was one less Akatsuki member to deal with in the future. 

She rolls the note back up and offers it to Jirou, who swallows it. Then with a soft screech, the crow lifts off her arm and darts back out of the window.

It wasn't a safe bet, that much was true. But even if Hoshigaki came to circumvent her work in Kiri, Sakura would still have two jinchuuriki on her side. The odds were in her favor if it came down to a fight. 

She turns around, ready to explain what she's just done to her cousins when a body pops into the room. 

It's a blonde haired woman, dressed in civilian clothes. Her eyes are bright with confusion, and her feet are bare. She's about to say something when she falls to her knees and retches up her breakfast. 

It takes a split second for Sakura to realize it's Yugito. 

She's on her in an instant, a healing hand on her back. Yugito doesn't have even remotely enough chakra to have been able to manage the transportation jutsu. Her levels are devastatingly low now, near full blown exhaustion. 

"Yugito," Sakura begins, "Yugito, come on, we need to get you into bed."

It's her brusque medic voice, her you-listen-to-me-because-I-know-better-than-you voice. The men around them have all reared back, drawing weapons or preparing ninjutsu. The jinchuuriki didn't recognize Yugito's chakra without Matatabi's augmenting it, but Neji has slid onto Yugito's other side to help Sakura get the woman up. 

"Sage's balls," Yugito murmurs, looking into Sakura's eyes. "You're a child. How can you be a child?"

She looks from Sakura to Neji, and her disbelief only mounts higher. 

"I thought you were gods, but you're both children," she breathes. 

"To be fair," Neji says with good humor, "you were delirious when you thought we were gods."

Yugito manages to laugh at that, one bright happy sound before she empties her stomach on the floor a second time. Sakura narrows her eyes, trying to feel along Yugito's ruined chakra pathways, now under incredible strain from the travel. 

"Sakura," Yugito murmurs, "don't you know it's impolite to seal people without their permission?"

With that, the woman loses consciousness. 

"Neji, help me get her into bed."

Neji nods and gets an arm underneath Yugito; Sakura ordinarily wouldn't need the help, but she's got one palm trying to repair damage and the other to get Yugito on a flat surface. Utakata gets up from the bed on which the three of them had been sitting, and Sakura goes about making sure Yugito isn't actually going to die from chakra exhaustion. 

"A god?" Rōshi asks, speculatively. 

Utakata claps a hand on their cousin's shoulder as Sakura's hands begin to glow green. 

"You haven't seen her in action," he says. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL THIS WAS A LONG TIME COMING WASN'T IT. 
> 
> i feel like there are …. huge differences between utakata's personality in the manga and his personality in the anime? so i'm just … smashing them both together and calling them canon but he's also dropping charm bombs left and right :-)
> 
> thank you for waiting, and i hope you enjoyed this chapter!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I think I'm going to like you, Sakura-chan."

"You were personally requested?"

Konan watches from her place beside Pein. Kisame's grin looks vicious, excited. It's not unlike how he usually looks, but discreetly, there is a difference. 

"Yeah. Some woman wants me to escort her beyond the Kiri border."

The piece of paper on the desk is slim, written in a hand that Konan does not recognize. It was a tidy scrawl, requesting exactly what Kisame had just described. But the slant of Kisame's smile told Konan enough. It said the same things to Pein as well. 

"There is a rebellious force in Kirigakure that seeks to unseat Yagura," Pein says, voice soft. "Do you think your contractor is a part of that force?"

Kisame shrugs, but he looks thoughtful. It's a question he's asked himself before. 

"If a coup is happening, no Kiri shinobi worth their ass is gonna want to bring a foreign shinobi into it. My guess is, they're a former defector coming home for the war."

Pein nods, peering down at the piece of paper. Konan knows what his answer will be before Pein even opens his mouth. 

A more destabilized Kiri will mean another nation, another economy in need of allies. Until the village under a new Mizukage is back on its feet, they will turn to other nations for aid. Kiri had done a splendid job at ensuring that no other village would be keen on helping them. The village had been a cesspit even before Tobi had warped Yagura for them. 

Which meant that either way the situation unfolded, Kiri would be desperate. Akatsuki would be there. And having an Akatsuki member around to displace a despotic ruler would do wonders for their reputation, despite their quiet grabs for the bijuu. 

Not to mention that it would make the extraction of Sanbi much more convenient. If Kisame happened to corner Yagura at the proper time, disarming him and bringing him back to Ame would be easy in the mess that occurs during a coup. 

So of course Pein gives Kisame permission to go. And Kisame, who suffered at the hands of a village that wrapped him and his loved ones in lie after lie, is very happy to go. 

Tobi is not. 

"I put the best damn genjutsu on that kid," he says, breath shallow and angry as he storms into Pein's little office. "The subtlest, most delicate genjutsu and you're just gonna let Hoshigaki waltz into Kiri and fuck it all up?"

"Tobi," Pein says, "I was just about to send for you."

"We've had Kiri in our pocket for years.  _Years,_ " Tobi presses, walking right up to Pein's desk and slamming his palms down on it.

Konan can feel the edges of her cloak begin to shift, paper waking up as she flares her chakra. Pein doesn't need the bodyguard; Nagato is far away, and the Path that wears Yahiko's face could break Tobi's hands before he slammed them on the desk a second time. 

"I put that kid under a genjutsu so well crafted nobody in Kiri would know it's from a Sharingan and now because some contractor wants to overthrow the government, you're ruining my work!"

"Did you come in here to complain or because you had a request?"

Pein's cool voice cuts neatly through Tobi's rage. The man seethes for a moment, then snatches his hands off the desk to stand up to his full height. 

"Send me as his partner."

Pein hums at that. Tobi was usually placed with Zetsu because of their complimentary transportation abilities; it was very hard to fight an opponent that could disappear at will, much less two. He had originally been placed with Deidara, as they had come into Akatsuki together, but Deidara was better suited to Sasori. 

"Kisame's contractor only requested him," Pein replies. 

Tobi's lip curls in rage. 

"Then let me shadow him," he says, grinding his teeth into a grim smile. "I won't even ask for pay."

Itachi was partial to Kisame the same way Yahiko had been partial to Konan. He was not an overly emotional man, but he knew what Kiri meant to Kisame and was not likely to stop the man if he went berserk. Tobi on the other hand, was much more likely to think of the organization. 

"Don't let him know you're tailing him," Pein says. "If you see an opening to secure the Sanbi jinchuuriki, take it."

Tobi, who wouldn't smile even if he wanted to, gives Pein a curt nod before he disappears. Konan walks around the desk, and picks up the slip of paper on which Kisame's contractor requested his aid. 

"It's common," she says, rubbing the paper between her fingers. "You could find it in any convenience store or hotel south of here. Tanigakure produces it primarily, but it ships to Wind and Fire Country on a massive scale."

She lifts it higher, up to the low lamp that Pein keeps at his desk, examining the handwriting.

"The strokes suggest a woman as Kisame said. Right handed, but the hand is heavily scarred. The ink is common as well, though likely it is Fire Country."

Common paper, common ink, a common woman with an uncommon hand. They do not believe in coincidences; Kiri was home to a jinchuuriki, and there was a girl out in the world trying to protect them from Akatsuki's wide sweeping arm.

Still, a mangled right hand is a small clue to go off of in the shinobi world. They will have to wait to learn more from Tobi's surveillance, and from Kisame's observations. If this Shikkotsu no Sakura was making such a bold move as to aid in the insurrections in Kiri, then Akatsuki would be there to protect its interests. 

"So you cannot trace it."

Konan places the piece of paper back down on the table. 

"No."

"No matter," he replies. He takes the piece of paper into his own hands, carefully crumpling it in his fist. "Tell Sasori and Deidara to begin their trek to Sunagakure. The Ichibi and the Sanbi will be easy to subdue before we move forward."

"Of course."

Konan turns on her heel and leaves with her marching orders.

* * *

Sakura hasn't been this close to Kiri since the disaster that was her first real mission outside the village. It brings back a strange assortment of memories, to be standing at the beach.

There is a bridge before her that makes a smile quirk up at the edges of her lips.

 _'So they finally finished it,_ ' she thinks. ' _The Great Naruto Bridge.'_

It's massive, stretching out towards her, but Sakura knows it is not a path she can take. She doesn't want to involve the people of Wave with her mission. She doubts Tazuna or Inari or Tsunami would remember her in the first place. If she were Naruto or Sasuke, or even Kakashi-sensei, perhaps. 

Besides, if any of them were to discover that she was traveling with two bijuu, word would travel back to Fire Country faster than Sakura could stop it. Wave relied on Fire for commerce, and they wouldn't risk their trade deals for a girl who hadn't done much for them when she had been around the first time. 

Still, Sakura has to hand it to Tazuna. It's a marvelous bridge. 

She has Utakata and Han flanking her on either side, while Rōshi and Neji are making the dutiful trek to Suna. Rōshi and Han had been hiding out in some nowhere town in Earth Country, so their journey to Wind would take several days. Sakura wasn't concerned. The father away they were from Kiri, the better, no matter which direction they decided to head in. 

Yugito had been a massive concern; she had depleted what little chakra she had in her reserves with her leap from Kumo to Earth Country. Sakura, having managed to do a senjutsu chakra transplant on Uchiha Itachi of all people, found it less daunting to do on Yugito, especially because she liked the woman. Or at least felt a measure of attachment to her. 

Yugito's chakra coils, used to the added strain of housing a bijuu, sucked up the senjutsu chakra like it was honey wine. She had jolted upright like a woman coming up for air after being under water for years. The transplant wasn't a permanent fix, but it was enough to kill the chakra exhaustion that had nearly ruined Yugito's already damaged chakra coils beyond compare. Sakura had left Hitomi with the woman to help take her back to Kumo when she felt well enough, with instructions to let Yugito sleep for at least six hours before they attempted the journey. 

Feeling already immeasurably better, Yugito had explained all she and Bee had uncovered about the other jinchuuriki and Sakura's plans. Because Yugito and Bee were still Kumogakure shinobi, they couldn't operate without their kage's approval, but Yugito was already more or less safe from Akatsuki's grasp now that they already had extracted Matatabi. Bee, who was great friends with Gyūki promised he would at least try to convince A to let him die with the eight tails still sealed within him, but it wasn't a safe bet. 

Sakura had hoped that it would be possible, for the jinchuuriki to die with their bijuu still sealed so that their massive chakra could be released into the world. It was becoming more and more apparent every day that, that just wasn't going to happen. Han, Rōshi, Utakata, they were all glad to have their bijuu extracted but Sakura lacked the time and the skill. She was not a fuinjutsu master. And even if she had Sango on her shoulder to guide the way, the process took much too long and left the master exposed. 

It was a moot point, and one she needed to keep her mind off of. She had three jinchuuriki at her side, and two more that would do what they could to help her in Kumo. That was five more than she had a couple of weeks ago. 

"This is nostalgic," Utakata says, breaking the silence. 

She turns her head to look at him. His messy robe is drawn tighter about him to keep out the cold that comes off the water. Han is dressed suitably in his armor; Sakura feels combat ready in her own clothes. 

"You got that right."

Sakura's hackles are up in an instant, and she knows the men who flank her feel the same way. Hoshigaki Kisame is too large a man to move as quietly as he does, and he's managed to get the jump on all three of them. 

"Hoshigaki-san," Sakura says, trying for polite. "I'm glad to see you accepted my request."

The man grins at her, too sharp teeth fitting together tidily in his mouth. Sakura spares a moment to wonder if he filed them, or if he was born that way. 

"Five hundred thousand ryo is a nice chunk of money for an escort beyond the border," he replies. "I'd be an idiot to pass it up."

The man, tall in his black and red and white cloak looks over the three of them. Sakura very much doesn't like the fact that she's essentially letting an Akatsuki member into Kiri, where three jinchuuriki will be at once. There has to be a catch, but it's one she can't see yet. She knew this was a gamble that might bite her in the ass, but she's always had better luck than her shishou, so she only hopes for the best. 

"Utakata," Kisame says, inclining his head. "Been a while."

Utakata says nothing, only sticks his pipe in his mouth. Sakura has a split second to wonder what on earth  _that_ means when Utakata begins blowing massive bubbles. There are four, one for each of them, and they float down to stand just in front of them all. 

"If we fight our way inside, we'll die," Utakata explains. "Kiri's a village full of people with summons that live in the water, and those summons patrol the borders."

"Not to mention the mist is thick as all hell," Kisame butts in. "Foreign shinobi get lost for days wandering in it. If we go right through like we know what we're doing, they'll cut us down before we reach the outermost islands."

Sakura is very grateful for the fact that Fire Country's trees are its best defense. They seemed much easier to navigate than all this damn water. 

"Step inside," Utakata instructs. "Mask your chakra to about the size of a minnow. Most aquatic summons have terrible eyesight and rely on sensing chakra to find their targets."

Sakura nods brusquely. Han steps into his bubble first, then Utakata. Absently, she can feel the way their chakra begins to shrink in on itself. It'll take perhaps a full minute for them to get it down to minnow size, considering the bijuu within them. It's easier for Sakura; most of her chakra is hidden within the seals on her forehead. Her own reserves are decently sized, and densely packed, and her control makes it easy for her to whittle it away into nearly nothing. 

"Hoshigaki," Sakura says, turning her head to face the taller man. 

He's got one foot inside of his bubble, and he peers down at Sakura.

"Once we're on the other side of the border, we don't need you anymore," she says. 

She reaches into her pocket and tugs out a thick roll of bills. She tosses it at Kisame, who plucks it easily out of the sky and tucks it into his own pocket. 

"That's half," she says. "You'll get the other half when you finish the job. After that, I want you gone."

He smirks at her and Sakura wants to wipe that look off his face with her heel. 

"Yes, ma'am," he replies, and steps into the bubble. 

She gets into her own, and follows alongside Han as Utakata and Kisame lead them into the waters of Kiri. 

They're bitterly cold, that much Sakura can tell. The round surface of the bubble begins to frost at certain points, especially when Sakura is too still. 

Fire Country ended before a long stretch of no-man's land arched into Kiri controlled waters. The tip of the unclaimed peninsula (more borderland than anything else) was a short boat ride away from the outermost of the twelve islands that surrounded Kiri, the Land of Waves.

Sakura can't remember off the top of her head if all of the islands were totally habitable; the largest one of them was the Land of Waves, and of course it was bustling with people now that its economy had been given a healthy boost because of its connection with Fire Country. 

Their proximity to Fire had protected them from the Mizukage's deadly grasp, that much was clear. Even a hypnotized Yagura would only do so much to antagonize another hidden village, even if it was over a bond so tenuous as an economic one with Wave. 

They move forward in darkness, Utakata and Kisame leading the way. Sakura isn't sure how long they walk for. Back in the forest, she had walked for days and had never noticed it. Even in Konoha at the hospital, she was on her feet for hours on end. She had solid stamina because shinobi stamina didn't permit anything less. Still, the walk is long and cold and Sakura wishes she had the foresight to put on a jacket before leaving. 

She can't unseal the cloak she has in her pack without using more chakra than Utakata wants her to. So she wrinkles her nose, and starts circulating her breath into the Breath of Life. Not too long after, she starts to feel better. 

Above them, as they get deeper into the water, it gets harder and harder to see. The last time she looked up, the Great Naruto Bridge was coming to a close in Wave country. Now, there is only open ocean above and open ocean beside them.

They form a line, the shine from the bubbles glowing faintly in the darkness. Kisame leads with Utakata right behind, and Han is just in front of Sakura who brings up the rear. She feels like she should be surprised; no fish, summons or otherwise have come to disturb them. She wonders if the waters are more loosely guarded away from Kirigakure proper. 

In history books, the twelve islands that surrounded the island on which Kirigakure was founded were islands that functioned as the village's first line of defense. Kiri's consistent terrible rulers had ensured a handful of revolutions, some crushed and some successful. The Land of Waves was the only of the twelve islands that had maintained its independence for as long as it had.

The others - Sakura couldn't say. Kiri, no, all of Water Country was incredibly private. Isolationist wasn't even the right word, because Water Country hadn't chosen as a whole to cut itself off from the world. Constant infighting had just made it so nothing else was possible. 

That infighting could be good or disastrous; if they happened upon an island that was loyal to the Mizukage, they were fucked beyond repair. If not, they still had a chance. 

That's the thought that sticks in Sakura's mind as they begin to walk on an incline. She knows they're beyond Wave, but the island they're beginning to ascend towards? She doesn't know where that island claims their allegiance. She knows Utakata wouldn't let Kisame lead them into a trap. And even though it turns her stomach to do so, she thinks back to her training in Shikkotsu, and for a moment she lets herself trust Hoshigaki. 

It may or may not be a mistake. 

Sakura surfaces last, her bubble popping as her feet step onto the pebbled beach. There is a young man there, blue haired, and standing on the land high above them. 

The sun is low in the sky, and night is preparing to fall. They'd been walking for at least the entire day. Sakura takes a moment to breathe through her fatigue, grateful for Han's steadying hand when she slips a bit on the pebbles beneath her feet. 

The boy, the blue haired boy looks at them, his eyes hard. There's a strange sword at his back, one that he hasn't drawn. Sakura has only ever seen two of the seven swords of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist, but the weapon at this boy's back is oddly shaped enough to be the third. 

He looks at them, from Han and Sakura to Utakata and Kisame. His eyes narrow at the sight of Kisame's cloak, and his hand immediately moves to take his sword off his back, drawn for battle. 

"So," Kisame says, not rising to the challenge. "Hiramekarei decided to let someone else wield her?"

The boy removes the bandages from the weapon, revealing a black bladed twin sword. It's gorgeous, that much Sakura can tell, but she knows that the loveliest weapons are often the ones you have to keep your eye on.

"I hope you're half as good as Mangetsu," Kisame drawls, still smirking. "Otherwise, I think she'll be very disappointed in you."

"Hoshigaki," Utakata snaps. "Restrain yourself."

He takes a step forward, placing himself squarely between the boy and Kisame. And that's enough to make Sakura's stomach drop. There's only one kid, but she's aware that this island is populated. Not densely, no, but there's something very suspicious about an island full of people that she can barely feel. 

That means shinobi. Two jinchuuriki and one tailed-beast-without-a-tail would be enough to help them make an escape, but that would ruin Sakura's plan. 

"We have information on the Yondaime Mizukage," Utakata continues. "I am Utakata. If Terumi Mei is among you, she will vouch for me, and I will vouch for my companions."

"Even if one of them is Akatsuki?"

The voice is joined by a swath of thick mist, settling down around them. Sakura immediately puts her back to Han's, drawing a kunai up in defense. She always did hate these damn thick fogs Kiri shinobi could call up at will. They irritated her as a genin and they irritate her now. The Hiding in Mist Technique was a Kiri staple; she wishes it could've been something that wasn't so cold.

"He is our paid guide inside the Kiri border," Sakura says, throwing her voice out so that she is loud enough to be heard. "His defection was recent, and we needed his guidance."

"And now that you are inside, what will you do?" asks the voice again. 

Sakura purses her lips. 

"We have information on the Yondaime Mizukage that those who want to end the Bloody Mist Era would find very useful."

There is a shadow, making its way through the fog. Tall, with long hair, longer than anyone Sakura's ever seen in her life. Her hair was that long when she first came out of Onyomi's slime. 

The shadow solidifies, becomes a woman, tall, in royal blue and fishnet, with a single bright green eye and lips that are pink with a paralytic for any fool that tries to get close enough to kiss her. She's beautiful in a way that makes Sakura's own mouth dry. 

The woman looks down at her, her smile lovely and dangerous. 

"A girl," she coos. "I always love it when there's a girl. Especially one that knows what she's talking about."

She looks Sakura up and down once. Abruptly, Sakura puts away her kunai. The woman laughs a little at that and turns, lifting a hand to let Sakura know to follow her. 

"You, with me," she says. "Let's let the boys take care of the boys while you and I have a little chat."

Sakura follows. She looks back once, and she can see Han's hulking red armor. His bright eyes are watching her through the mist; they both know he could dispel it even part way if he was of a mind to. But Sakura was walking into an interrogation, and willingly at that. It would be bad if Han cut through this massive defensive barrier. It might get Sakura killed. 

She follows the tall woman out of the mist and up the slight hill. The boy with the twin sword does not move from his post, not relaxing even minutely. Utakata and Kisame were former Kiri shinobi. They undoubtedly knew how to work around the Hiding in Mist technique. 

What they might've had a bigger problem with, were the masses of shinobi slowly closing in on them on all sides. 

Sakura swallows the lump that rises in her throat and turns her head to the woman who leads her towards a fairly large tent. The woman looks over her shoulder at Sakura as she enters, smiling kindly at her as she does. 

"Don't you worry," she says. "Those boys of yours aren't going anywhere."

* * *

 The girl is nervous, but holds herself well. She isn't shaking, and she doesn't look back at her companions over much as Mei leads her away from them. She sits when Mei offers her a seat and her posture is erect. She could move at a moments notice. 

"You've managed to return two formerly loyal Kiri shinobi to the doorstep of a revolution," Mei says, leaning back. "That's no easy feat."

The girl fidgets minutely, just a small quirk of her lip and a shuffle of her gloved hands. 

"Utakata was happy to come. Hoshigaki was hired."

"Kisame was a year above me in the academy," she replies.

The information surprises the girl, and that makes Mei want to laugh. It's easy to look at Kisame and think he must have spawned from the ocean fully formed. But he was a boy once. He was vicious, and had a capacity for cruelty, born only because his environment demanded it of him. He had been a good man before he left the village. Mei is inclined to believe that he is still a good man now.

"It is good to see him again," Mei says. "Even if he's wearing that awful coat of his."

This makes the girl fidget again. 

"How much did you pay him?" 

Bright green eyes catch and hold Mei's gaze. Good. She's got a spine, and a strong one at that. 

"Five hundred thousand to get me on the other side of the border."

A decent sum for a relatively easy mission. Getting past the twelve islands that flanked Kiri was easy enough; most of the islands had no shinobi presence, and no samurai either. Getting them to land on Kiri soil might have been more difficult, but it would probably be nothing for a shinobi like Kisame. Anyone good enough to get out of the village was also good enough to get back in. 

"And how do you know Utakata-kun?"

"He's my cousin."

That almost makes Mei laugh. Utakata had no family as far as she knew. But the conviction in the girl's voice when she says it is nothing to balk at. Maybe they weren't blood, but they were close. Utakata had been gone a very long time. Perhaps he and this girl traveled together, and called each other cousin out of affection.

"And your name?" Mei asks. 

"It's common courtesy to offer one's own name before asking so of others."

That really does make Mei laugh, and the girl relaxes minutely because of it. 

"I like you," Mei says, drumming her fingers on her knee. "I'm Terumi Mei. And I'm leading this little insurrection."

"My name is Sakura," the girl replies. "And excuse me, but this insurrection is by no means a little one."

Sakura is right. Mei's forces are a good thousand men strong, each of them holed out on one of the twelve islands surrounding Kiri, except for the Land of Waves. She's got swordsmen, turncoat hunter nin, and handfuls of people that are the last of their family line after the kekkei genkai purges. She's got moles in Yagura's administration. She's got summons for spies in the water. 

The force that came out to corner Utakata and his little troupe were a small fraction of the army that was going to lay siege to Kiri in the coming days. 

"You -," Sakura begins. "You're the Terumi Mei that Utakata said would vouch for him?"

"I am," Mei hums, tilting her head to flip her hair over her shoulder. "I have a kekkei genkai."

It's all she needs to say. Kiri's purges of its own populations, and even that of the twelve islands that surrounded Kiri were in recorded history. Mei's family had dwindled down to a precious few. Her parents had hidden her when she was born, squirreled her away to the Land of Seafoam. They paid a great sum of money for her care there, until they were caught and murdered.

Mei had a sister somewhere, if she hadn't been killed already as well.  

She had gone to Kiri on her own terms. Her parents had died when she was six, and the money had stopped coming in for the family that had taken care of her. They were happy to be rid of her. And their family name on her papers disguised her bloodline well enough that she could enter the academy, and become a full fledged citizen of Kiri. 

They were always low on shinobi. Mei was six, she was strong, and she was a quick learner. The Sandaime Mizukage would have been a fool to turn her away. She disguised her kekkei genkai as a technique taught in the Land of Seafoam. Nobody asked her questions about it. They were very desperate for shinobi. 

The girl, Sakura, regards Mei with a different look in her eye. 

"Utakata and I went on several missions together when he was still a Kiri shinobi. We were partners often. I knew of his little secret, and he knew of mine."

There was strength in allying yourself with other outsiders. Zabuza had known that. Abruptly, Mei wishes he was there with them. He and his companion would have loved to be a part of this. 

"So what is this information that you have on our dear Yondaime, Sakura-chan?"

She leans forward. Sakura doesn't move. She looks troubled for a moment, but something settles in her and she speaks. 

"A number of years ago, in the beginning of his term, the Yondaime was placed under a genjutsu by a member of Akatsuki."

Mei doesn't bother asking which one. It was a well known fact that Uchiha Itachi was a member of the organization, and no paltry genjutsu would be able to snag a shinobi like Yagura for years and years on end. It was a Sharingan illusion. The information makes Mei tense. 

How hadn't she noticed? How hadn't anyone noticed? Why had they all been so quick to pass off his cruelty as a byproduct of his tailed beast? Yagura had been a kind child save for his bloodlust, which was necessary to survive in their village. Even after the Sanbi had been sealed into him, his personality hadn't changed much. 

It had barely been a year into his reign before they realized he wasn't going to undo the Sandaime's legacy. He had gone from kind, polite even in general conversation to absolutely ruthless. And Mei feels like a fool for not having asked more questions. She was a shinobi. She should have known better. 

"And why are you here with Utakata, Sakura-chan?" she asks, eyes flickering over the girl's throat and forehead.

Those were the common places for kunoichi to wear their hitai-ate. The plate wasn't sewn into her clothes either. She was unaffiliated like Utakata. She could have been a rogue or an assassin. Utakata was a good judge of character, and he had been willing to vouch for her. He had been willing to vouch for Kisame as well. 

"He's family," Sakura replies, echoing herself. "Kiri is important to him. If the illusion on the Yondaime is broken, I think he might stay."

The possibility makes Mei lift an eyebrow. She had anticipated Utakata's aid as soon as he said her name when he surfaced on the island. She had not anticipated the idea of him staying in Kiri. If the illusion on Yagura was dispelled and Utakata chose to stay in Kiri, that would be two jinchuuriki back in their village to defend their walls while they did their best to rebuild their economy and their reputation. 

It was tempting. It was also firepower that Mei and her forces definitely needed. 

"And your friend in the armor?" Mei asks. 

"He's my cousin, too," Sakura quips, a wry smile on her face. 

"That's one hell of a family you've got there."

"Thank you," the girl replies, smiling still.

Mei curls a piece of hair on her finger, measuring Sakura's information.

"The only way to break genjutsu on another person is to disrupt their chakra flow or physically harm them," Mei murmurs. "You understand how that might be difficult with Yagura."

"Not any more difficult than assassinating him."

"You've got some nerve," Mei replies, feeling easy, "accusing me of attempting to assassinate my village's leader."

"Coups rarely end in anything else."

"Yagura wasn't made Mizukage at such a young age for no reason. Killing him would be easier than landing a hit strong enough to jolt him."

Sakura bares her teeth in a little smile. It's an expression that Mei has seen on young Kiri kunoichi when they successfully pass their sexual assault exams by slaughtering their faux rapists. It's a grim, capable look. Self-assured and satisfied. 

"I'm a medic," she says. 

It's a loaded statement. There were few medic shinobi in the world, and the refined chakra control it required was the reason. And any average shinobi just throwing their chakra into someone else's tenketsu could give both themselves and the other shinobi chakra burns to the nth degree. You had to put your chakra in and then take it back out. Most shinobi could do the first, but very few could do the second.

What Sakura was offering was a bloodless revolution; she would jolt her chakra into Yagura's system to shake the illusion off his shoulders. 

"Are you fast enough?" Mei asks.

Sakura rolls her shoulders and says, "I can be."

She'd have to get in close, closer than anyone's ever been to Yagura in years. Mei leans forward, places her elbows on the table that sits between them. 

"I think I'm going to like you, Sakura-chan."

* * *

The rebels occupy every island except for Wave outside of Kiri proper. They've effectively boxed in Yagura and the Kiri shinobi forces. The moles and sleepers Mei had based in the village would activate whenever her siege began. They had been biding their time, waiting on information that came from their moles to indicate a proper moment to strike. They didn't have the advantages in terms of numbers, but they did have the element of surprise. And now they had another two jinchuuriki and a man that might as well have been one. 

The forces on the eleven islands around Kiri would lead coordinated attacks to the western and easternmost edges of the village, leaving pockets to the north and south for a smaller force to get inside. The northern force would lead the remaining Kiri forces away from the civilian populated areas, then split in half and seal off the remaining exits to the village. 

Mei was keeping the people she trusted the least right at her side in the southern squad. Utakata, she trusted, but Kisame and Sakura she didn't. Sakura didn't feel even remotely ruffled by it. Han was assigned to the northern force. He and Kokuō would be effective in sealing off the exits so the Yagura and his guard couldn't escape the village. 

Utakata was coming along because he was probably the best able to take on a jinchuuriki. Sakura was going because he and Mei would primarily attack Yagura to make an opening for her to jolt him out of the genjutsu. Kisame was supposed to leave as soon as Sakura, Han, and Utakata made it onto Kirigakure soil. By the time the action hit, hopefully he would be gone. 

The plan was simple, not foolproof. Easier in theory than execution. But Mei and her forces understood how to fight Kiri shinobi. Sakura and Han were the only ones that didn't, or at least had not done so for some time. The insurgents in Kiri had only been waiting for the right time to overthrow Yagura's rule. Sakura and her cousins were the hint they were waiting for. 

It's only natural, it really is, that it all goes wrong. 

* * *

They wait two days. They attack on the third night because the weather is with them; a natural fog has settled over all of the islands. 

Han has no way to camouflage himself; his armor is bright red and distinct, but Sakura has plenty of blues in her storage scrolls. She dons colors like Mei's, and tugs on a pair of black pants. She pulls her hair back into a braid, and threads senbon through it in case she is yanked back by her hair. She doesn't cover her Byakugō. They look so different from her shishou's that they aren't likely to be recognized. 

She summons Hitomi for their speed and Shigeo to be a second pair of eyes. He settles cheerfully at her throat, tail curling over Hitomi's. She asks Fudo to settle on her collarbone and Yusao just behind her ear. She's got a neckful of slugs, and one for an earring as well. 

She tugs her gloves on tight and tries to calm the butterflies in her stomach. This is the closest she's ever been to going to war. A hand drops onto her shoulder that makes her nearly leap out of her skin. She looks at who it belongs to, and Han is giving her an encouraging smile. 

"We'll make you an opening," he says. "All you have to do is take it."

He gives her shoulder an encouraging squeeze to match his smile, and then he moves on. He heads out to the north squadron and disappears into one of their boats. Sakura is suddenly grateful for the seals on the bottom of their feet. If anything happens to any of them, they'll have a way out. 

Sakura and the rest of the southern squad step carefully into Utakata's bubbles, but instead of dipping below the water, they float high into the air. They fan out, high above the fog, crossing the channel between the Land of Kelp and Kirigakure. Utakata keeps them in the sky for hours as night falls. 

They wait, still, hanging in the air. Even when Mei mutters into her comm for the assault to begin. Sakura watches as below them, the fog begins to thicken. She can't see any shinobi from this far up, not distinctly, but she can see them move like ants. All of Mei's forces were easily identified by their near uniform outfit of pale blue, so as to fit in with the fog they conjured. 

She crouches down to her knees, preparing for the eventual drop. There weren't enough comms for she and the men she brought with her, so she's banking on the link between Onyomi and Saiken to put her and Utakata into contact if they have to be, likewise with Kokuō and Saiken if the need arises. 

It doesn't take very long for the fighting to progress. Sakura's eyes flicker from the far east to the far west, watches as Kiri forces meet insurgents. Though Sakura can't hear into Mei's bubble, she can see the way the woman subtly clenches her fist. The northern forces are moving in, then. 

She wonders if it's difficult for Han to work in the fog despite being able to turn it into vapor. By now, they only have a measure of the element of surprise left to them. They haven't shown their hand, the fact that they're going after Yagura. It won't be long until they do. 

Mei turns her head and nods once. Utakata brings his pipe to his lips, and begins to shift all of them into position. Mei at the front, Utakata and Kisame flanking her, with Sakura bringing up the rear. 

The ocean starts to roar in Sakura's ears a split second before the bubble pops. 

She's hurtling downwards, aware of the silence in her mind despite the four slugs clinging to her skin. They aren't expected, no, but shinobi are too clever to not look up every once in a while in a fight. 

The land in front of the Mizukage Tower. The building is built into the stony mountains that jut out of the ground, covered in moss like most of the buildings in the village. And there are roughly one hundred shinobi all guarding it. 

Mei spits out a torrent of acidic pale brown mud, and the fighting begins. 

Sakura turns, trusting Shigeo to warn her if her team moves on without her. There's immediately a man coming towards her, about her size with a tanto in his hand, prepared to strike. Sakura's hands form the seals of her summoning contract, and she slams her palms into the earth.

"Seikijun Keimusho!"

Fudo's talent lurches to meet her, and several stalagmites shoot out of the ground to keep the man away from her. She doesn't get time to stand up and enjoy the victory; there's a senbon aimed for her temple that she snatches out of the air with her gloved hand and throws back where it came from. 

 _'Pay attention,'_ Shigeo snarls in her head.  _'On your left. Woman. Launching gauntlets like Shizune's. There are more needles coming.'_

Sakura darts forward, running up the stalagmites she's just thrust out of the earth. The volley of senbon follow her. She turns when she reaches the peak of the crystals, and she launches her own kunai at the woman. 

She can see now that Kisame and Utakata have been pulled further out from the fighting, but that Mei is pressing forward in her assault towards the tower. 

_'Senbon girl at two o'clock.'_

Sakura grunts in affirmation, twisting out of the way as the woman launches several more needles at her. Something catches in the light, and abruptly Sakura can see ninja wire. She reaches out, grateful for her gloved hands in case of paralytic.

She snatches the wire and tugs the woman toward her meter by meter. The wire is connected to her gauntlets, and Sakura drags the woman forward until she can slam a fist into her ribcage that sends her flying back. 

A disruption from below destroys the crystals that she's standing upon. A rock wall is being shoved through them, high into the air. She turns her head in enough time to see a second and a third begin to rise around her. Sakura looks back forward, focusing hard on exactly where she was before she turned around to face the enemies behind her. 

 _'It's enough. We're on our way,'_ Hitomi whispers in her mind. 

There's the lurch that comes with travel, and suddenly Sakura is back where she was. There isn't enough time for her stomach to disagree with her, because Shigeo is snapping about the shinobi directly behind her. Sakura goes down to her palms, jutting out a back kick that catches the man below the jaw. 

She hikes her legs up behind her until she's standing on her hands, and finishes the backflip until she's on her feet again. It puts her there in enough time to launch back from the sword that sweeps at her abdomen where Fudo is wrapped. Sakura balls up her hands into fists, and quickens her footwork. 

It was nigh impossible to disarm a Kiri swordsman. She doesn't bother trying to use a kunai to parry. Instead, she dodges the strikes as best as she can, suffering a cut at her shoulder. When the man brings his sword above his head to strike down at her, she stops it between the palm of her hands. 

It's terribly satisfying, the way she pumps just enough chakra into her palms to snap the blade in half. She follows through with a side kick that sends the man stumbling back. 

Two women come at her from either side, both wielding matching torrents of water around their fists. Sakura forms the seals for a basic doton, slams her hands into the earth, and wills it to create a dome that will protect her. 

She brings the dome in closer to her, then closer still, then extends her left arm and right leg until the dome touches both. 

 _'On three,'_ Shigeo says.  _'One, two -'_

"Shannaro!" 

She strikes out, punching and kicking the hard packed earth at the same time. The women had approached the dome while she was inside, and each of them get a piece of rock to the chest for their effort. Sakura elbows the roof and shimmies through, uncomfortable with how much like a sitting duck it makes her. 

Mei is ahead, gaining ground. Utakata is playing her defense and Kisame - Kisame isn't there anymore. Sakura lets out a breath of relief; she'll have to get the rest of her money to the man somehow, but -

A lancing pain shoots up her left heel, and Sakura can feel the poison on the senbon begin to trickle into her system.

 _'On it,'_ Yusao murmurs. 

The slug slithers down her ear and latches herself onto Sakura's ankle, already sucking the poison from its new path in her bloodstream. Yusao isolates it around Sakura's ankle, so she can focus on fighting. 

_'Incoming!'_

It's a volley of shuriken, and Sakura isn't sure if she's gonna be able to dodge it in time. She takes a moment to dull the nerves that have been damaged by the senbon. She rises to run as the shuriken approach, but a flurry of blue comes to stand in front of her, blocking the shuriken. 

"Hoshigaki," she breathes. 

The man's left his Akatsuki cloak behind, and his chakra eating sword is deflecting the weapons that nearly ruined her entire left side. 

"Do I look like the type to run away from a fight?" he asks, barely glancing at her over his shoulder. 

Sakura stands, feeling wobbly but grateful for Yusao's assistance. She draws a kunai of her own and gives Kisame her back to guard. 

"I'm not paying you extra for this," she says. 

The man laughs at her, and Sakura flips her kunai before throwing it at the kunoichi that approaches her. The woman dodges it, and then it's a close quarters fist fight, the kind that Sakura likes best. She dodges and weaves, turning the woman's momentum against her until she's able to grab her wrist, tug her close and slam her into the earth. The kunoichi leaves a crater where Sakura puts her into the ground. 

 _'Eyes up!'_ Shigeo barks. 

There's a kick coming down at her head, and she lifts her arms to block it. She activates the senjutsu chakra in her bones to absorb the impact of the hit. The leg that comes down on her shatters with the force of the chakra assisting her block. Sakura leaves the shinobi to crumple to the ground so that she can face the nagitana currently trying to disembowel her. 

She dodges to the left and then to the right when Shigeo's yelp of,  _'Fish man's coming!'_ makes her duck. Kisame's drawn his sword out in a full circled arc that flings the nagitana wielder far away from Sakura. He finishes his rotation, and Sakura jumps back to her feet just in time to feel a wave of malevolent chakra wash over the battlefield. 

It's also terribly familiar. 

She turns her face towards where Yagura has entered the playing field. He looks like a child, which is terrible, because he doesn't even look like he's under a genjutsu. His eyes are hard, and he lifts his hook from his back as he looks at the four man force that's come to take him down. 

Sakura's breath catches in her chest. It's up to Mei and Utakata now. They have to make an opening, just like Han and the northern force did, and Sakura will follow through. 

_'Pay attention, brat!'_

A fūma shuriken comes swinging for her middle and Sakura does the wild thing and leaps upwards. She lands on Kisame's sword and regrets it because the blade sucks at her senjutsu chakra.

It's too important a resource to waste on Kisame's damn weapon, so Sakura uses it as a launch pad to propel herself upwards. She does a flip in the air that begins her descent, and when she strikes the ground she lands with an axe kick that would make her shishou cry. 

"Watch my back!" she barks at Kisame. She doesn't spare him another glance as she presses forward. 

None of the Kiri shinobi seem keen on helping their Yondaime with his fight. There's a mirror hanging in midair, from which emerge reflections of Utakata and Mei. Sakura licks her lips, eyes darting between Yagura's hook and the water that drips off the mirror. 

If it's a suiton, a doton can stop it. Or at least make it weaker.

Sakura performs an Earth Style Wall, calling up a dome to encase the mirror. Because there's nothing to reflect but darkness, the reflections themselves turn to puddles before they reach Utakata and Mei. The distraction leaves them enough time to redirect their attacks on Yagura, but it also puts Yagura's eyes directly on Sakura. 

His gaze is disquieting. He's clearly older than he looks, but he's short for his age. His eyes narrow at her, and she's glad for the distance between them. 

With a rebel yell, Mei spits a wall of magma that Utakata begins to run up and along as it cools. He blows bubbles incessantly, acidic ones, ones filled with water. They all float down towards Yagura, who swipes at them with his hook, popping them before they can touch him. 

The process gives Yagura's back to Sakura. It's the first chance the has and the best one she's gonna get. 

 _'Hitomi,'_ she thinks.  _'Right where I'm looking.'_

_'On our way.'_

Sakura coats her hand in her own chakra, refining it and refining it still on her open palm. She'll slam it into his back, and that will be the end of the genjutsu hanging over him. 

Hitomi drags her through space and time, forward, forward, _forward_. Sakura blinks, and she's at Yagura's back. Her palm comes outwards in a strike pressing forward still, and then suddenly, she is thrown back. 

The force of the throw knocks her breath out of her. She hits the ground once and bounces back into the air. She must have hit her head because suddenly there's a sharp ringing in her ears and then she collides with something - a body, but it catches her and breaks her fall. 

She blinks the spots out of her eyes, trying to hear the world over the din of the concerned slugs asking her if she's alright in her mind. Kisame is above her, one arm wrapped around her while his other digs his sword into the earth to slow her down. 

She swallows down the urge to vomit as the feeling of oppressive chakra fills the air, dwarfing her, forcing her to feel smaller. She turns, and she sees a flash of a black and red tail, whipping out behind Yagura. 

"Well shit, kid," Kisame mutters. 

"Shit indeed," she replies. 

She eases herself out of his grasp to where Utakata and Mei are taking Yagura in this new form on. The Kiri shinobi have all but abandoned the fight, not wanting to be confused for enemies while their Yondaime begins a rampage. 

"Hoshigaki," Sakura says, feeling tacky blood begin to dribble down the back of her neck. She can't tell if it's from her kiss with the ground or from the needles that are woven into her hair. 

"Can that damn sword of yours eat bijuu chakra?" 

When she turns her eyes to look at him, he's giving her a terribly toothy grin. 

"I'll cover you this time," she says, spitting out bile onto the ground in front of her.

Sakura staggers to her feet, aware of Yusao's conflicting urges to cover her poisoned ankle and to see to the concussion that's blooming in Sakura's skull. Sakura huffs out one breath, and before she can inhale again, Kisame is moving forward. 

She stays directly behind him, dodging as he dodges as a second tail emerges to stop his coming. The feeling of angry chakra doubles, and Sakura swallows the vomit rising in her throat. 

A tail lashes out at Kisame, and he catches it against the blade of his sword. Sakura stays in his shadow. She'll wait, just a little while longer. Just until Hoshigaki's sword knocks two tails back down to one, and even before then if she can. 

With a shove, Kisame forces the tail off his sword and dashes forward. Sakura stays just behind him. She closes her eyes for a brief moment, and activates her nature energy Byakugō. The only thing that could deflect raw power was raw power itself. Sakura only has a years worth of nature chakra stored within her, so she needs to make this strike count. 

The nature energy Yin Seal unfolds on her forehead, curling thick bright green lines down her face, neck, and arms. She breathes in, and focuses. Kisame has stopped again, a tail lashing down directly overhead. Sakura grunts, disliking the way she feels trapped. 

At her uninjured heel, a bubble pops. She looks at it, eyes then darting to Utakata. He nods at her, and a trail of bubbles settles down at her feet. The plan clicks, and Sakura immediately steps onto one of them. 

She hardly has to focus her chakra to her feet; the bubbles are sturdy enough to take her weight. She steps from one to the next as they float into the sky. They pop out of existence once her foot leaves them, leaving no time for Yagura to lash out at them with his many tails. 

Mei spits vapor and mud at Yagura while Kisame attacks his tails. Utakata lifts Sakura higher and higher until she's directly over the Mizukage's head. The last bubble pops, and Sakura hurtles downward, her right fist coated in nature energy that tastes like peaches and razor grass and the breath between life and death. 

She opens her palm as she falls, and she sees Yagura look up the split second before her hand slams down on his forehead. 

Sakura  _shoves_ the nature chakra through the cowl of the Sanbi's red and black chakra. She forces it downwards, forces it into Yagura's chakra coils, and then as abruptly as she can, she yanks it all back out. 

She can feel the moment Yagura belongs to himself again. 

Her feet touch ground, and then she crumples. Though she can't feel the pain in her left foot, there are torn tendons there that Yusao cannot heal until Sakura is still. She takes a knee, breath coming out heavily through her chest. 

She looks up, watching as Isobu's chakra fades, curling back into Yagura, until the young man in front of him is someone she can call cousin. Tears spring to her eyes.

 _Fuck_. She did it. 

Yagura looks around like a man recently woken from a dream. He takes in the destruction around him, his shinobi around him, then the defectors come home. 

"Mei-san," he says, brows furrowed. "Utakata-san… Hoshigaki-san?" 

He looks down at his hands, then at Sakura. 

"I don't understand, I -," 

"You don't have to right now," Sakura says. "We'll explain everything."

There's hesitance in his face, but hope, or a flicker of it comes into his eyes. He doesn't recognize her, he has no reason to. But Isobu must be in his mind telling him who she is, and why she is here, and why Utakata is here, and what they have done. 

"It's so good to meet you, cousin," Sakura adds, carefully tugging herself to her feet. "We have a lot to tell you -,"

There's a whirling, a displacement of space and time just over Yagura's shoulder. Then there is an arm and a leg, and a man behind a bright orange mask in an Akatsuki cloak. He grabs Yagura by the middle, and then they are both gone. 

Sakura's stomach drops. She falls back to her knees, stunned. 

"What?!" Mei shouts. "What? Who was that?! Who on earth - ?!"

The Kiri shinobi move. Though some are in shock, others dart forward to where their Yondaime has just disappeared. 

"Utataka!" Sakura bellows. 

She's unsure of where her voice is coming from. Surely it is not coming from her own mouth. It sounds too hollow, too angry, too horrible to be coming from her throat. 

"Get to Han! Get out! We've been double-crossed!" 

"Imouto - ,"

" _Go!_ " 

She feels the moment Utakata follows her order, compelled by whatever quiver she's making in her throat when she speaks, with whatever terrible expression she's making with her face. She feels his chakra find Han's, then feels Han and Utakata latch on to Rōshi, and then they are gone. Sakura exhales. 

She turns her face slowly to where Kisame is standing. Rage flares hot and wild in her stomach, and Sakura cannot see anything for her bloodlust. 

" _You."_

She moves with a speed she should not be using with her concussion, with her ankle holding her down. She doesn't care. Her nature Byakugō is still activated, and nature energy yearns to be used at its own pace. It vaults her forward, and Sakura's fist comes down hard on Kisame's sword where he lifts it to protect himself. 

" _You!_ You did this! _This_ was your plan the whole time!"

"Kid, listen to me, I -"

" _Shut up!"_

Grief pours into her rage, fueling it. They _had_ him. They had almost had him. They had helped start a damn coup to save him and now he was gone, as good as dead. She trusted him, trusted Kisame, and this is all her fault. 

Yagura is going to die and it's all her fault. 

She bears down hard on Kisame's weapon. It's bare now without its bandages, and her scarred knuckles come down hard onto the shark scale sword.

_'Sakura-chan.'_

It eats up at her chakra, and Sakura lets it. She can't form a plan through her anger. 

"You want it, huh? Then take it!"

She pours as much chakra as she can into the blow, and the force of it tears her glove off her hand.

_'Sakura.'_

_'Sakura-kun, please.'_

The doubled force of her punch pushes Kisame back, makes him give an inch, and when she has it, Sakura lays her palm against his sword, grimacing as it cuts into her flesh, and she sends a second punch directly at his face. 

The crunch of bone and cartilage beneath her fist is unbearably satisfying. She wants  _more._

_'Brat.'_

Shigeo's voice stops her just as she takes a step forward to strike Kisame again. 

_'The dead are dead. Worry for the living.'_

It makes her shudder, but she knows he's right. She takes a step back, eyes still blazing. She tries to collect herself, but knows that she can't. She forms a fist with her scarred hand, scarred again because of Kisame's sword. 

With her blood in her palm she swears, "The next time I see you, I am going to end you."

Sakura pulses chakra into the seal on her foot, and she is dragged away to her still breathing cousins in Wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :-)


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The Shimura clan has been cultivating the trees of Konohagakure since the Founding," he continues. "If anyone can help you, it's him."

They're just crossing the border of Wind when there's a displacement of air that smells like wet grass. Neji turns, instinctively activating his Byakugan. He relaxes when Han and Utakata pop into existence. He tenses when he doesn't see Sakura with them. 

"What happened?" he asks, deactivating his kekkei genkai. 

He scans the two jinchuuriki for injuries. Rōshi walks over to Han and looks in his face, brusquely patting down his shoulders and chest to see if his armor stood up to battle. 

"Where is she?" Neji presses. 

Utakata's gaze darkens a little bit. He's rumpled stilll from the fight. Han is allowing Rōshi's motherhenning, but Neji knows better than to get too close to Utakata. Some shinobi weren't fit to be touched after battle. It was a good way to lose a hand, touching someone who was still riled up from nearly dying. 

"She's on her way."

It isn't enough. The words, though they are meant to be somewhat comforting, make Neji's stomach clench hard.

On her way? What on earth did that mean? Neji knew how Sakura moved in a fight, but she had never been stuck in a melee situation, with attacks coming in on all sides. She wasn't a swordsman, which meant she couldn't properly engage any Kiri shinobi that held one of the weapons with any degree of accuracy. Which meant she had to disarm them, or distract them, until she got close enough to land a knockout hit. 

With Hitomi at her side, Neji wasn't so worried. But he was worried about everything else. Yagura, to be precise. And Kirigakure. He knew Sakura was intelligent. She had been pegged for a paper ninja when they were genin, and she knew strategy and theory like the back of her hand. But what was that in battle, when one false move meant your death or your enemy's?

He isn't sure what he's ready to do, but he can feel the seal that Utakata made on his forehead. He wonders what exactly he could do, dropping into Kiri out of nowhere. If he showed up mid Jūken, he might be able to deflect several attacks. With his Byakugan activated, he could probably find Sakura in less than a handful of minutes. 

If she let him (which was always the trouble with her, whether or not she wanted to do the thing you wanted her to do, or thought she ought to have been doing), he could get the both of them out of there in no time flat. 

She appears in the smell of wet grass, looking haggard as he's ever seen her. 

She's limping slightly, and there are slugs still curled up onto her body. One by one, they dismiss themselves, unable to help her now that she is not in battle. The lines of her green Byakugō are still lancing down over her arms, but the injury on her ankle and her bloody knuckles belie a lack of healing. 

He steps forward to stop her, but she walks past him. 

Neji opens his mouth to speak, and the feel of something slimy against his toes makes him think better of it. He looks down to see Yusao at his foot, and he crouches to offer the slug his palm. 

"Why isn't she healing?" he asks. 

The slug's eye stalks droop in sorrow. 

"Because she does not want to."

Neji tries not to grind his teeth. It should be something incredible to see, a show of will so strong it can circumvent one of the primary functions of a piece of fuinjutsu. Right now, it only aggravates him. Sakura cannot walk on a busted ankle for the meters on meters that are still between them and Sunagakure proper. 

"Why not?" he asks, looking from Sakura's limping figure to the slug on his palm. 

"She lost Yagura," Yusao says. 

And there it is. The thing Neji had expected. He had not anticipated that the newly restored Mizukage would leave his village to join them on their mission. Not seeing Yagura appear with Sakura or Utakata or Han had not disturbed Neji overmuch. 

"To who?" 

"Akatsuki," the slug replies. "The blue man, he double-crossed us. His partner stole Yagura with some kind of transportation jutsu. Faster than anything I've ever seen."

Neji blinks up to where Sakura is still walking. 

"The blue man?" 

She stops. Then keeps walking forward. Neji places Yusao on his shoulder and walks forward to catch up with Sakura. He throws one look over her shoulder to see how the other three are faring; they are very pointedly not looking in his and Sakura's direction, hanging back by a few meters while their bijuu tidy up their wounds. 

"What did you do, Sakura?"

She looks a mess. Her ankle is a mass of flesh slowly going purple from whatever rot has taken up shop there. There are rips on her sleeves and newly scabbing wounds. There's a slightly hazy look in her eye, and what flesh of her is exposed is mottled with fresh bruises. She looks a mess. 

"What blue man betrayed you, Sakura?"

She doesn't want to answer him. She walks onward. The only slugs still around are Shigeo on her throat, and Yusao on Neji's shoulder. His eyes flicker down to the slug, one of the progenitors of the Hyūga's techniques. Shigeo looks up at Neji and shakes his head. 

"Sakura," Neji presses. 

"I got him killed."

She says the words before Neji can open his mouth to question her again. She walks onward, not still, not able to handle being rooted in one place. Neji would call it battle jitters, but from the way she stands, he can tell a mass of grief is threatening to swallow her. 

"I hired Hoshigaki."

Neji swallows, and is immeasurably grateful that he's been training since he was about six to have a tight leash on his emotions. 

"I hired Hoshigaki, and I thought, - I don't know what I thought."

"You  _hired_ Hoshigaki Kisame?"

He sidesteps so that he's standing in front of her. Her eyes are half lidded, crinkled with the pain of her injuries. 

"I thought it would work," she murmurs. "I thought -"

He doesn't really want to know what she thought. 

"Why would you -"

"He left Kiri. Just like Utakata. He knows how they fight. How to get us into the village. And I thought he would want his kage back so I -,"

"So you put Utakata, and Han, and Rōshi,  _and Yagura's_ lives in danger?"

His voice is hard. She looks at him, then, really looks at him for the first time since they've been reunited. Her face is like a lost child's. Like she's worried she's about to get scolded, but that the hand that has been burned from touching the stove was already punishment enough. 

It's how Shikamaru looked when they all returned from the Sasuke Retrieval Mission. It was his first time as squadron leader, and everyone under his command had nearly died. 

"When you are leading shinobi into battle, you don't lie to them," Neji says, voice angry. "You do not withhold the truth from them unless absolutely necessary."

"I know," she protests, almost weakly. And it must be more from her injuries, because the Sakura Neji knows wouldn't take a scolding without returning fire. 

"If you had told them, you could have made a contingency plan."

"I know."

"The only reason the rest of you are alive is because of Sango's seal."

"Neji,  _I know._ "

"I don't think you do."

There's a spark of something in her eyes, something like her personality before this first loss began to chip away at her. Neji sighs, and looks over Sakura's shoulder at the men behind them. 

"They are  _relying_ on you," he says. "All three of them, and Yugito. Naruto and Gaara even though they don't know it yet." 

He looks back at her, to where her eyes are slightly widening. The lines of her green Byakugō are beginning to fade, folding back up into the seal on her forehead as the real weight of what she has done, of what she has lost, begins to settle in her mind. 

"The Hyūga. The Nara. The Hatake. The Godaime herself, and every other slug summoner. All of them are relying on you," he says. "You  _cannot afford_ to make these kinds of mistakes. You cannot afford to not inform your squad of major decisions. You'll get us all killed."

Sakura looks over her shoulder, back at Utakata, Rōshi, and Han. She opens her mouth to speak, perhaps to protest. But then she closes it. Neji sighs, and he turns around, taking one knee in front of her. 

"Get on," he says, holding out his arms so that she can hook her legs around his stomach. "You need to rest, and you need to let Yusao heal you. You can't let guilt keep you from healing."

He says it deliberately away from her, his eyes fixed on the horizon ahead. He hears a muffled sob, and then a few hesitant steps forward. Then, a hand on each shoulder, and her legs carefully wrapping around his waist. He hooks his arms beneath them, and rises as Yusao inches from Neji's shoulder to Sakura's. The slug tuts, and mutters something about poison and concussions. None of it is what Neji wants to hear. 

Sakura presses her face into his throat so that she will not be seen crying, but on the white collar of his shirt, Neji can feel her tears. This is her first loss in battle, and she deserves to mourn it silently, without an audience.

* * *

Ino is fucking  _livid._

There is nothing that Ibiki is willing (or legally allowed) to tell her about ROOT. And she can't go rustling through his mind because lord only knew what kind of shit was hidden in there. Ibiki was a solid man, whose coping mechanisms had coping mechanisms, but those scars? That bandanna? They spoke of a mind that was better left the hell  _alone._

She could ask her father, but that smacked of nepotism. And besides, Ino didn't want her father implicated in any of what she was doing. It was one thing for the Yamanaka heir to go down for maybe starting a minor revolution. She couldn't take her father down with her. She was a clan heir, not the clan head. Not yet. Inoichi's position was tenuous, and Ino understood that. 

It didn't make her want to slam her face into a brick wall any less insistent.

Many mistook Ino for a gossip, and for good reason. She traded in civilian secrets, in knowing whose children were deemed worthy enough to join the academy, and which ones had been spurned. She knew every recent birth and death and anniversary because of her post in the flower shop. Ino stacked this information like cards in a deck that only she knew how to shuffle. She could load that deck in any way she saw fit, and she would whenever the need arose. 

Which means that when she was younger and working the flower shop, she noticed how often Hatake Kakashi came in to buy flowers. Usually lilies, and only a handful at a time. The flowers were usually lilies, but on November fifteenth, they were always strawberry blossoms for some reason. 

Ino had been too young then to put it together, and hadn't bothered asking. Everyone had lost someone, and Hatake Kakashi was no different. Once he became Sakura's sensei, Ino had tried picking up polite conversation with him, and though he smiled through the small talk, Ino got the impression that he very much wasn't a people person. 

War ate some people, and spat them out part way. War ate other people whole. 

But Ino is a chuunin now, and she sees things better than she used to. Hatake is a stronger man than he was when Ino and her year-mates were all genin. She's partial to believe it has something to do with Sakura and her ridiculous, hyper-extensive vows to Shikkotsu. Those had to have had something to do with her trips to the Nara and Hatake lands. 

She had learned from her internship with Ibiki how to read people to a much better degree than her birth as a Yamanaka had allowed her to. She had already instinctively been able to pick up tells, could understand how a person's face twitched when they were lying, how their stories were always told slightly differently when they were telling the truth. But Ibiki's internship taught Ino how to place those Yamanaka bred tools more thoroughly into the field. 

Hatake Kakashi walks like a war vet. He clocks his surroundings like a child genius. And he carries himself like ANBU. 

Retired or not, Ino knows that Kakashi will have information invaluable to her inquest. She's got questions, and she is not the type of woman to be deterred by someone that doesn't want to give her answers.

So when Hatake comes in like clockwork for his twice weekly order of lilies, Ino already has it ready at the front desk.

"Penny for your thoughts, Hatake-san?" 

His eyebrows immediately narrow together. He knows her well enough by now. They haven't been on an awful lot of missions together, but it's a well established fact that Ino is Sakura's closest friend. 

"I'm afraid they aren't worth quite that much, Yamanaka-san," he replies. 

Ino smiles at him, elbows on the counter. 

"I only have a little question for you. You can pay for your flowers while you answer it."

Kakashi pulls out his wallet and starts counting his bills; his order is always the same, and he always has exact change. 

"Ask away," he replies. 

He's humoring her. Probably thinks she's just missing her best friend, and no one else who is as close to Sakura as Ino is is still in the village, or isn't busy. Neji is out with her wandering the world, Tenten is busy with her new team considering her coming jounin promotion. Naruto is outside of the village, Tsunade is  _running_ the village, and no one talks about Sasuke. 

It's a kind gesture, he probably thinks, to take a measure of pity on a girl who wishes she had been able to keep her closest friend at her side. Who had tried to do just that, and had failed.

No matter what name a kunoichi carried, no matter what kekkei genkai or hiden techniques, there was always a split second when a shinobi underestimated her. It was a split second that made kunoichi devastatingly effective. 

"If I wanted to tear up the roots of a tree, how would I begin?"

Any other shinobi would have faltered. Hatake Kakashi is too good at what he does to so much as hesitate handing his money over her, still rifling through his wallet for coins. 

"I would think that a girl working in a flower shop would know better than I do about such things, Yamanaka-chan," Kakashi says. 

Ino takes the cash and begins fitting the bills into the register. 

"We're undergoing a new project, Hatake-sensei, and I'm looking to get all the help that I can."

The suffix changes don't go unnoticed by either of them. A subtle question of 'do you know what you're asking?' and an answer of, 'will you help me or not?'. 

"Well let me see," he says, dropping exact change into Ino's outstretched palm. "You have to begin by cutting off the arms of any low branches still on the trunk."

_Find and eliminate lower level opposition._

"Then, I think you have to remove the top portion of the trunk, but not too much, so you still have an amount of leverage to pull it out."

_Find a sleeper, doesn't matter who. Keep them under surveillance. Catalogue their every move, but don't let them know. Turn them to your side._

"After that, you'll need a shovel. You'll have to dig to reveal the roots of the stump."

_Make allies. You'll need them to legitimize your cause._

"Then, you should wash all the dirt off the roots, so you have a good chance to hack at them. You'll need an axe, I think."

_Expose them to your allies. Then go for the throat as soon as you can._

"I'd suggest pushing at the trunk. That may expose more roots."

_Push at your sleeper. Get them to give you names, records, anything of use._

"Keep pushing at the trunk until it's all uprooted. And if you can't get the whole thing out, I'm sure you could ask your friends to help you. Fire Country trees can be such stubborn things."

_Use your allies. Gather as many to you as you can. It will take all of you, together._

"Wow, Kakashi-sensei," Ino says, beaming as she drops his coins into the register. "I had no idea you were such an avid arborist. Thank you very much for the advice."

The light trill of the cash register being closed is a pleasant noise to work to. Ino carefully wraps a nice blue ribbon around the bundle of white lilies, before handing them over to Kakashi. 

"Oh, no, Ino-chan, I'm only an amateur," Kakashi replies, smiling himself. "If you want better advice, consider asking Councilman Shimura Danzou."

Ino's heart thumps high into her throat, and suddenly the trill of the cash register is less pleasant than it was a moment ago. 

Shimura Danzou. 

"The Shimura clan has been cultivating the trees of Konohagakure since the Founding," he continues. "If anyone can help you, it's him."

Shimura Danzou was the head of ROOT. An organization that  _shouldn't_ be answering to anyone that wasn't the Hokage. He was operating interrogations on Konoha shinobi.  _Invading the minds_ of loyal Konoha shinobi.

It didn't matter if the interrogation was about what Ino knew about Sakura, that was illegal. Had he even had a warrant? Had Ibiki been given any paperwork about his subordinate's impromptu interrogation? And what had Danzou wanted to know about Sakura in the first place? What did he already know about Shikkotsu?

If Ino had been anyone else, that interrogation in Room Six might have gone a hundred different ways. All of them might have ended up poorly for Sakura, and for the other slug summoners and potential summoners in the village. 

The Hokage was the single authority of the village. Regardless of the contingencies and councils that kept their power in check, no one was supposed to be able to override their authority unless it was by a democratic vote of some kind. There was no way Tsunade would have given approval to have a random Yamanaka rifle through Ino's mind. 

At best, this was faulty leadership or Ino was on a bad hunch. At worst, it was conspiracy theory at its finest. It meant that Tsunade only  _thought_ she was the leader of the village, while Danzou was free to undermine her authority at every turn. Both cases made Ino want to grind her teeth on something made of metal. 

There was no reason for Shimura Danzou to have all that power.

Ino busies her hands with a book of coupons, and loyalty membership cards. She fiddles with a bright green one, with seven punch holes. 

"Are you interested in a loyalty card? Free of charge?" she asks, smilingly. "After you buy seven bouquets, your eighth one will be free."

Kakashi rubs his chin thoughtfully. 

"I do buy an awful lot of lilies, don't I?" he asks. 

"You do," she replies. 

"I'll take one, then."

She hands him the card and a pen for him to write his name and the date he received the card on the back. Ino records the same information in a big blue binder kept under the front desk. 

She swallows, throat feeling oddly thick. Shimura Danzou was an old war hawk, a survivor, one of the last of the Sandaime's generation. He was on the council of elders. Ino had seen him before, when she had shadowed her father as the Yamanaka clan heir. 

He had a face that only a mother could love. And even then, it would be a struggle. Not for any overt hideousness on his part. His missing eye and chin scar weren't even remotely frightening to Ino, who actually enjoyed spending time with Ibiki of all people. 

But he radiated a kind of cold, waiting malice. A predator that looked past his prime, but was anything but. 

"You know, Kakashi-sensei," Ino says, continuing. "Tenten and I have been really curious about the trees surrounding Konoha. Especially the rotting ones in the Shodaime's forests."

"Oh?" he replies, eyes flicking up from where he fills out the punch card. 

"Yeah. Sakura was interested, too, before she left. But now it's just me and Tenten. Sometimes Tsunade-shishou as well."

And maybe it's because his back is on the front door, and Ino's mother isn't in the shop this morning, and he knows he can get away with it because the two of them are alone. 

Hatake's black eye flashes up to Ino with the kind of intensity that lets her understand just why he's survived as much as he has. 

 _ROOT is gunning for slug_ _summoners. Godaime included._

"Hm," Hatake says. "Is that so? Tsunade-sama doesn't seem the type."

A confirmation of what Ino had already surmised for herself. Either Tsunade didn't know that ROOT was operating under her nose, or she did know but she wasn't aware that the organization had her on its watchlist. 

"I had guessed as much," Ino replies. 

Kakashi stands up into his characteristic slouch, sliding the punch card into his wallet as Ino finishes up making a record of it in the blue binder. He nestles the lilies neatly in the crook of his elbow, his other hand resting in his pocket. 

"I think I might know someone that also has an interest in uprooting the dead trees. He's an expert, but don't ask him about Shimura arbory in particular," he continues, eyes crinkling in a little smile. "His lips are sealed."

Sealed. Shimura Danzou sealed his underlings. There were ways around that, obviously. He didn't have to talk when a Yamanaka like Ino was around. If she had Susumu to help dive into his mind, then maybe - Maybe they wouldn't need fuinjutsu to deal with this problem at all. 

"Thank you for your patronage, Kakashi-sensei," Ino says, minding the way the front door bell rings as another patron comes into the shop. "And thank you very much for your advice."

"Anything to help a friend of Sakura-chan's."

He waves at her, and then he leaves. Ino doesn't get a chance to deflate or to decompress, but she's grateful it's Hinata that's come in through the door. She lets down her guard a fraction of an inch, if only to let Hinata know that something is absolutely wrong. 

"Ino," she says in that soft voice of hers, indigo eyebrows knitting together as she approaches the counter, "what's wrong?"

Ino leans over the counter, tucking a couple of blonde hairs behind her ears before she pops a kiss on Hinata's lips. It does exactly what Ino loves it to do, which is to make Hinata flush a light shade of pink. She's been much less shy in the days after Sakura's return from Shikkotsu, and the subsequent Hyūga reformation. She's less scared of everything now, and is sure of herself in a way she hadn't been before. 

Maybe it was because of Sakura and Neji, or maybe it was because she finally was in a space that wasn't so damn oppressive. The Hyūga were finally relaxing, and Hinata was flourishing because of it. She had even managed to drop the stutter.

Her kindness, her patience, these were no longer things to denigrate about her character as a shinobi. Now they were invaluable skills that made her one of the most sought after teachers in the school on the Hyūga compound. Iruka had been sniffing around there, keen on getting Hinata apprenticed as a chunin academy teacher. 

She must be feeling extra bold today, because as Ino dips away, Hinata follows her, and returns the peck on Ino's lips. 

"Are you alright?"

"How would you feel," Ino asks, untying the knot of her apron behind her back, "about starting another revolution?"

* * *

They decide to split up again, because it's the reasonable thing to do. The jinchuuriki can afford to wander aimlessly because they are not easily recognized, though Han and Rōshi's hitai-ate may cause them some attention. Han's Iwa hitai-ate would get him several rather nasty looks, but if he kept his head down, he would probably be fine. 

Suna was a valley protected by steep cliffs, and the only entrance to the village was between two of them. The idea of having the jinchuuriki sneak into the village left a sour taste in Sakura's mouth, so they agreed with some trouble to leave the jinchuuriki in a small oasis town nearer to the border, while Neji and Sakura pushed on to Suna. 

Neji was a Konoha shinobi, and Sakura was easily recognized as the Godaime's apprentice after her performance in the Suna Chuunin Exams. They'd be questioned, but not severely. 

She was silent on his back, all the way through their trek, even after her foot had been healed. Yusao had insisted on sitting on Sakura's head even after she had healed her concussion, just to keep a majority of the Suna heat off her face. 

Neji hadn't bothered speaking. He had figured that she wouldn't want to talk, at least not yet. Shikamaru had been similarly rattled. When Neji had started leading his own missions as a jounin, the responsibility of having other lives in his hands had been extraordinary. Shikamaru and come close, but hadn't lost anyone his first time leading a mission. Neji had been just as lucky. 

But Sakura's first time, she had lost someone dear to her. Someone she hadn't intimately known, no, but someone bound to her in chakra. And perhaps that was worse. 

When the stark cliffs that surround Suna come into view, Sakura gently dug her heels into Neji's sides and Neji let her down. He watched her test her weight on her recently healed foot, watched her pat Yusao on her head to encourage the slug back to Shikkotsu, and watched her walk forward. 

She was still tired to be sure, but she was too proud to be carried any longer. Not in view of foreign shinobi, especially not those that did not know the nature of her fight and her recent loss. 

She would lean on him every once in a while, needing a break. Sun was unforgiving even when you were in good health, much less fresh from a fight. The Konoha shinobi had experience with the wet humidity of Fire Country. Adapting to the dry heat of Wind hadn't been too difficult for them during the exams. Still, fighting in that heat had been unpleasant at best. 

When the finally reach the cleft between the two cliffs, Sakura has begun sweating in her Kiri blacks and blues. Neji wonders about when she last had a drink of water, and moves his hand to shrug his backpack off his shoulder so he can find the canteen within. He manages to get it out and into Sakura's hands before he sees a familiar face ambling about at the guard station based between the two cliffs. 

Shinobi can feel eyes on them, and Kankurō's painted face flicks up to where Neji and Sakura are heading towards the border. His face is a little pinched in an attempt to recognize them through the distance, but punk hair and Hyūga eyes are pretty memorable traits. A grin comes to Kankurō's mouth and he puts his hands on his hips, waving them over. 

"Hey!" he shouts jovially. "Long time no see!"

Neji lifts an arm to wave back at him, but the cheerful look on Kankurō's face falls a bit as they get closer. He catches sight of Sakura, who despite her healing, still has tears in her clothes indicative of a recent fight. She may have acquiesced to getting her ankle and concussion, and the miscellaneous cuts on her arms healed, but the hand that was scarred in Shikkotsu and scarred again on Hoshigaki's demon sword remains caked with blood, littered with fresh cuts. 

Kankurō's gaze lifts from Sakura back to Neji, who looks much more pristine and concern shadows his face. It was rare for one shinobi to look so haggard and one to look so fresh. It usually meant one of them had been ambushed, and the other had been on a smaller scale mission, had provided support, and managed to get them both out alive. 

"Get us a stretcher," Kankurō demands of the two guards in the station, rapping his fist against their desk. He looks back at Neji. "How long since the fight?"

"This morning," Neji answers. "Missing nin."

Kankurō nods at the curt answer. Neji is grateful for it. Saying so little was the best way to avoid lying while still being believed; besides, no shinobi worth their salt would give out mission details to a foreign shinobi, even if they were allies. 

Neji produces his papers from his bag, handing them over to Kankurō for review. He doesn't ask for Sakura's.

Kankurō begrudges him nothing. The guard station shinobi produce a stretcher that Sakura looks at dismally. She allows herself to lie down on it anyway.

"Most of her injuries have been healed," Neji reports. "She might be dehydrated."

Kankurō winces. 

"Can't afford that here."

The two shinobi lift Sakura in the stretcher, and Neji stands at her head. Their eyes, and Kankurō's too, linger over the four purple diamonds on Sakura's forehead.

"Take them to the diplomat's quarters. Let my sister know they're there," Kankurō says, handing Neji back his travel papers. "I'll hold the gate until you get back."

The guards nod brusquely, and then they begin their trek into the village proper. Suna's hospital is surprisingly close to its entrance for practicality's sake, but there were private hospital rooms in the Kazekage's residence, and the adjoining diplomat's quarters. 

Neji can see the appeal of placing them in the diplomat's quarters rather than in the hospital. It would cause less of an alarm among Suna shinobi, to see a random couple of Konoha nin being healed in their hospital. It also afforded them a measure of privacy.

In Konoha, all foreign shinobi regardless of ally status were healed in private quarters away from the hospital, for the typical shinobi paranoia related reasons. You didn't want a foreign nin -whether you trusted them or not- in one of the most important buildings in the village. That was like leaving a rat in a box of cheese and telling it not to eat.

The guards get them to the diplomat's quarters, and once inside, one leaves to inform Temari of the shinobi currently within while another flags down a medic that gets Sakura in the stretcher up a flight of stairs and into a private room. 

Once there, she's leveled tidily onto a tightly made bed with teal sheets, and Neji sits down in the chair beside her. The medic nin has a kind smile, and checks Sakura's vitals before hooking her up to an IV drip and leaving the two of them to silence. 

Neji gets his bag off his shoulder and lets it rest between his feet. The room is shaded with the curtains drawn so that Sakura will sleep, and Neji finds himself dozing. The whole building is comfortably cool, standing in direct opposition to the blazing heat of the outside world. Even though he has not had to fight today, he wants to rest. 

"I'm sorry."

The words make his eyes snap open from where they had been casually fluttering towards sleep. He doesn't look at her, because from the rasp of her voice, it sounds like she is going to cry. She hates crying more than anything, hates how much she's done it in the past, hates how it makes her look. So he doesn't look while she does. 

"If you're sorry, you'll heal your hand."

She hiccups. Neji folds his arms, and lets his head loll downwards. 

"If you're sorry, you'll keep moving forward. And you'll make sure you never do anything like this again."

He hears her sniffle. He knows she's already itchy around the IV, hates the way the things dig into her skin. He knows she's gritting her teeth through her tears, too overwhelmed to do anything else but weep. 

"If you're sorry, you'll be better."

* * *

 

Temari appears a short while later with a medic just behind her bearing food. Sakura is asleep, or perhaps is pretending to, and Neji has lifted a magazine from the small bedside table near Sakura's bed. 

"Looks like you've gotten yourself into it," Temari says, a light grin on her mouth. 

Neji sighs, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. He likes Temari well enough; hated her after she beat Tenten in their first exams, liked her more after she and Tenten started dating. She's a difficult woman, a little grating, but she's clever and sharp and she cares about Tenten, so it's enough to offset her usual abrasive personality. 

"She's gotten herself into it," Neji replies. 

Temari nods, watching where Sakura twitches in her sleep. 

"Must've been a hell of a fight," Temari murmurs. "No one could touch her during the exams."

"She was outnumbered," Neji replies.

"And outclassed?"

Neji bites his tongue. Suna shinobi always put the mission first. They held great stock in their ability to complete their tasks; the higher your mission success rate, the more clout you got in the village. 

Konoha was like that to a degree. Had been less so like that since the world had come to peace. 

"Outnumbered," Neji repeats. "I don't know how long she'd been fighting until I found her."

Temari hm's at that, and puts her hands on her hips. 

"I'll send a hawk to Konoha to let them know you made it here safely," she says. "Medics say she isn't in critical condition, so you should be well enough to travel together in the next two or three days."

She scratches her chin, looking at the room before her. The medic across the room leaves a tray of covered food for Neji on the beside table where the magazine once rested, and leaves Sakura's tray on the table opposite her own bed. 

"There are rooms down the hall and to the left. You can pick any of them that have open doors," she adds. "Make yourself comfortable."

Neji nods slowly. 

"Thank you, Temari-san," he replies. 

"Don't mention it," Temari scoffs. "Tenten would chew my ear off if we didn't do at least this much."

Neji nods again. Mention of his teammate sends a brief pang of loneliness in him. How is Tenten? Is she working well with Sango? The slug, though hundreds of years old, can sometimes be difficult to work with. Childish, if you asked anyone other than Sango herself. 

And Lee. Was he well? Was he training as hard as he used to? Was he still teaching clan-less civilian children how to swim? And Gai-sensei, had he finally finished writing his Manifesto of Youth that he blathered cheerfully about?

"I'm sure she would," Neji replies, feeling homesick. 

Temari narrows her eyes at him, not concerned but assessing. 

"You've been out of the village awhile, huh?"

Neji gives her an assessing glance of his own, but Temari waves a dismissive hand. 

"She told me she missed you, I could guess the rest," she replies, quelling his suspicions. "Guess that means you missed her promotion."

His eyes widen. 

"Tenten was promoted?"

"Mhm," Temari nods. "Tokubetsu jounin. Fuinjutsu specialization. Happened maybe a week and a half ago."

Tenten had been promoted and Neji had missed it. After he and Gai, she was now the next highest ranking shinobi on their team. A tokubetsu jounin. Elite. With a fuinjutsu specialization; that had her Uzumaki blood and Sango's help written all over it. Though of course, she had gotten the promotion on her own. 

Neji wonders what kind of test the Godaime had put her through. Tokubetsu jounin went through different testing and examination processes than regular jounin. To get a fuinjutsu specialization, she probably had created or cracked a seal of some kind, and a complicated one at that. 

And he had missed it. 

"I'll be sure to send my congratulations to her," Neji says, mouth feeling dry. 

Temari lifts an eyebrow, then looks across the room at the medic who is standing by the door waiting to be dismissed. 

"She knows how it is," Temari says. "You can't always report back to your loved ones on long term missions. She doesn't hold it against you. So don't be a baby about it. She isn't mad."

Neji nods, confused about why being mostly insulted has managed to somehow make him feel a little better about the situation. Temari was funny that way. She could call you an idiot or a baby or a brat, but she could say it in a way that made you feel like you weren't one of those things. 

"I'll keep that in mind," Neji replies. He opens his mouth again, and speaks before he can stop himself. "If you are writing to her personally soon, I would appreciate it if you could send her my regards."

Temari barks out a laugh that she quickly muffles behind her hand, mindful of Sakura's sleeping form. 

"I'll tell her you miss her, too, if that's what you mean," she replies with good humor. "Konoha clan shinobi really are something else. 'I would appreciate it if you could send her my regards'. Sticks up all your asses, I swear."

She saunters over to the door, waving the medic out in front of her. Over her back, she flashes a peace sign and says, "Take it easy, Hyūga."

She shuts the door behind her, and Neji bites the inside of his cheek. He looks to Sakura, whose face is pinched in her rest. The seal containing Nao's chakra on her forehead has a faint glow to it, and Neji wonders if that means the slug is visiting Sakura in her dream. 

He lifts the tray to look at the food underneath it; kushari and bread, with a little pot of vinegar and hot sauce on the side. A tall glass of water, and beside it, a second glass of sugarcane juice. 

He tears into the bread, if only to have something to do with his hands.

He doesn't know where to go from here. They're in Suna, they have an almost ally in the Kazekage, but convincing a head of state to release a weapon of mass destruction was a fool's errand at best. Gaara would hear them out because he was a good man, and trying to be a better one every day, but his councils would overrule any vote he made to release the Ichibi. And that was only assuming he'd be willing to do so in the first place.

While thoughts of Tenten and her promotion bat at his mind, arousing his guilt as best as they can, Neji looks over Sakura's bed at the closed door. It is - it is concerning to say the least, how much he has lied today, and to allies of Konohagakure no less. Temari and Kankurō were good shinobi, and the alliance between their villages was recent enough that a healthy suspicion of Neji and Sakura would not have been unwarranted. 

But they had let them into the village anyway. Was it because of the alliance that Gaara had brokered when he became Kazekage? Or was it because there was no reason to mistrust the Godaime's apprentice, and a jounin Hyūga? Their reputations did not precede them yet by much; but did Neji's connection to Tenten give Kankurō a reason to trust his sister's girlfriend's teammate? And did Sakura's shishou open doors for her that otherwise should have been closed?

Kankurō had checked Neji's papers, but hadn't bothered for Sakura's. Had the four Byakugō on her forehead, now revealed for the world to see, unveiled her as the disciple that surpassed the Godaime?

Neji wonders why it's become so easy to lie, to obscure the truth, to allow misconception and personal attachment endear him to his allies. Then again, he'd always been taught that for a mission, anything was permissible. Perhaps he should have gone to Kiri with Sakura, foregoing his hitai-ate to fight at her side. 

Maybe he would have seen Hoshigaki's betrayal coming, even if she hadn't. 

* * *

The temple looks exactly as it did when Yugito left it, and she finds a measure of comfort in that.

It is sprawling and beautiful, with blue roofs and wind chimes that never make noise, no matter how rough the breezes are. A gentle fog is laid over the area, drawing mist around Yugito as she walks. It feels like home.  

It had been a long and troubled journey back to Kumo, once she had been healed enough to sufficiently travel. The odd chakra, the senjutsu chakra that Sakura had healed her with still rattled around in Yugito's bones, curious and easily excitable. It almost reminded her of Matatabi's, when the cat was first sealed into Yugito, and her chakra was trying to find a way out.

She had arrived back in Kumo in the morning, popped back in her bathroom, sitting on the edge of her bathtub, exactly where she was when she accidentally activated the seal those many days ago. It is disorienting to be back, having been dragged through space and time.

Hitomi had left not very long after that, wishing Yugito the best of luck in their quiet little voice, before popping out of existence. Yugito had stayed seated on the tub's lip, had counted to one hundred before she carefully stood up. When no dizziness struck her, she stood and stepped out of the bathroom.

Maneki stood outside, an old woman with dark brown skin and long orange blonde hair going grey at the roots. She was old, older than Yugito could have guessed, and used a cane. Though she had a slight hunch, she always gave the impression that she was looking down on people rather than looking up at them.

"Maneki-obaa-sama," Yugito said, immediately stopping short, dropping her hand off the doorknob.

"Yugito-chan," Maneki says, voice rumbly and cheerful in her chest. "You've been using the restroom for a very long time."

Yugito's jaw does not drop. Well, maybe it does, a little bit.

"I'm very sorry, obaa-sama, please, let me pass, and you can have the restroom to yourself."

"No, no, Yugito-chan," the old woman insists. "Grown women like to have long baths. It's good for the hormones, I hear."

The elderly matron that raised Yugito is talking about orgasms. She thinks that Yugito has been masturbating for the last day she's been missing. Yugito is twenty-nine, and is deeply embarrassed.

 "Maneki-obaa-sama, I think you've misunderstood -,"

"Come take a walk with me, Yugito-chan," Maneki says, turning slowly around and leaning out her elbow for Yugito to grab. "It has been quite some time since we took a walk around the property together."

"Ah, of course, Maneki-obaa-sama."

She takes the old woman's arm, and Maneki leads Yugito out of the comfortable little house that she has lived in since she was old enough to live on her own. 

It isn't an especially lovely day out. It's overcast and cloudy, and a fog sits low over the mountains that Kumo calls home. Yugito can taste lightning in the air, and wonders when the storm will hit. 

Hisa, a calico stray that had taken up space in the temple grounds when Yugito was a girl, lazes about on the porch to one of the priests' homes. The cat lifts his head, yawns, and goes back to napping as Yugito and Maneki pass by. 

While all of the priests had lent a hand in Yugito's education, Maneki had been the one with whom she had spent most of her time as a young girl. Her jinchuuriki training had occurred partially with other shinobi, but her spiritual training had been under Maneki's firm hand. She had been this old for as long as Yugito had known her, and there was something comforting in the heavy weight of her old arm on Yugito's younger, slightly smaller one. 

 "It has been so long since you were able to leave the village for pleasure, and not for your duties to Kumogakure," the old matron says, ambling towards the temple proper. "I hope you had a nice vacation."

Yugito blinks. 

"A vacation, obaa-sama?"

"Oh don't tell me you went somewhere boring," Maneki says, an eyebrow lifted. "I'll bet you didn't see any pretty girls either. What a shame."

"But Maneki-obaa-sama, I didn't go anywhere."

"Yugito-chan," Maneki says, voice like soft thunder in the far distance. "You were never able to lie to me as a girl. Don't try and start now."

Yugito opens her mouth and shuts it again. 

"You're a grown woman, Yugito-chan, and I have known your heart for twenty-seven years. I know you have done no wrong," Maneki continues. "Only those of us on the temple grounds know of your departure, and now of your return."

Yugito swallows, carefully helping Maneki climb the steps of the lush, pale blue temple. They both remove their shoes, Yugito helping Maneki to do so, before they press forward. 

"You are different now, after Matatabi-sama has been removed from you."

The words are heavy in the empty air of the temple. Still, they are charged. Yugito did not know that anyone other than herself, and now Sakura and the other jinchuuriki knew Matatabi's name. 

"Maneki-obaa-sama," she says, haltingly. 

Maneki doesn't answer her, only hums and walks Yugito forward. The temple is not especially large, but it is not small either. It is a lovely, sprawling property, larger inside than it is outside, a magnificent use of space. 

Yugito had not been permitted inside of it when she was a girl, at least not without a chaperone. Maneki had usually been the one to take her inside. Even now as an adult, Yugito is still aware of an oddly pressing energy that comes in on all sides around them in the temple. It is hotter in here, but it is colder as well. 

"I wonder what you have learned, little one, and what there is still left to teach you," Maneki muses. "Though I suppose now is as good a time as any."

They come to a set of closed black doors. Maneki lifts her middle finger to her mouth, and bites hard enough to draw blood. She draws her whole palm across the door, middle finger leaving a trail of blood nearly invisible against the black wood. 

The doors open themselves, and the two women step inside. 

Within, the air is even more stifling, like a storm finally coming to a head. In the center of the room, there is a large blue scroll, massive really. Maneki takes Yugito over to it, and without the younger woman's help, she easily begins unrolling it. 

On the scroll, are the names of all the priests that live in the mountain temple, written in blood. Yugito's eyes scan the scroll, and when she comes across Maneki's name, she falters. She hadn't known that the old woman had a summons of some kind. 

"It is not a summoning contract," Maneki says, as if reading Yugito's mind. "It is a promissory scroll. Ensuring that the priests that protect this land will protect the spirits that inhabit it, and that the spirits will protect them in turn."

There is a little meow from the doorway, and Yugito looks up to see Hisa, licking his paw. He flicks his ears back and forth before trotting inside. Yugito opens her mouth, ready to walk across the room and take the cat out, but Maneki stops her with a firm hand on her arm.

"There was once a great spirit," she begins, "a great and terrible cat that sat at the top of the mountain. Every man, woman, and child that lived at the bottom of that mountain feared the cat, and so left it to the tallest peak by itself. One day after a hunt, it got a splinter in its paw."

Hisa pads forward, purring and rubs his back against Yugito's shins. He walks between her legs, then nuzzles his cheek against Maneki's shin. 

"All the shinobi of the land wanted to leave the splinter in the cat's paw, so that the cat could not hunt and would eventually die or leave the mountains. But a wise woman who lived in those same mountains knew better, and she climbed to the top of the mountain and removed the splinter, which was a sword, from the cat's paw."

Hisa sneezes in the middle of the story, before leaning back on his haunches and launching himself up onto the scroll. He pads over it, and even as Yugito reaches out to lift him off the clearly old and sacred document, Maneki stops her again. 

"In return, the cat swore to protect those shinobi that lived in the mountains and treated it with respect, if in return those humans would protect the cat and its many children."

Yugito narrows her eyes; Hisa licks his paw and runs it over his ear. Maneki reaches out, and scratches Hisa just below the chin. 

"All the cats of this world bear the chakra of that great one. Some in physical forms like Hisa-chan, here, others in corporeal forms, like the bakeneko and the nekomata."

Hisa purrs, and Maneki laughs a little at him. He turns his face so that she can scratch his ears, and then the back of his head, then flops over so his side can be scratched as well.

"Now what sort of cat do you suppose has enough chakra to have that many children, Yugito-chan?"

Matatabi. 

The answer is a surprise, but it's a leap that Yugito has been primed to make. Matatabi had told her as much, so long ago, when Yugito was younger and thought that stories were exactly that, stories. 

"There were nine of these spirits, but the people of this mountain in Kumo swore their allegiance to the Great Cat Spirit and her many children. And when it came to pass that the Great Cat Spirit was sealed away into child after child, the people of this mountain vowed to protect and train them to use the spirit's power to the best of their ability."

Maneki looks at her then, something proud in the way she holds her chin.

"Matatabi-sama was not a bijuu, but a spirit made of the natural world," she says. "And you, Yugito-chan, you have finally learned this, haven't you?"

Yugito nods. Bee had told her as much, but in a different way. But this, hearing it from Maneki proves it in a way that a conversation with a creature made of chakra just couldn't have. 

"There is a girl," Yugito says. "She is with the others, with Matatabi's siblings. She is trying to release them, all of them, back into the world where they belong."

Maneki hums at that, lifting Hisa into her arms. 

"That would solve a great many troubles," Maneki replies, "and will cause a great many more."

"If it brings back balance to the world as we know it, wouldn't that be worth it?" Yugito asks. "If it means the wars end, and peace might be possible, wouldn't that be worth the discomfort?"

Maneki lifts an eyebrow at her as Hisa butts his head beneath her chin. 

"I am sure A-sama will be happy to be uncomfortable for the sake of a little peace," she says, deeply sarcastic. 

Yugito purses her lips, feeling naive to have not thought about the Raikage in her excitement. Ending the wars that plagued the world was bait enough for anyone to try anything, that was true enough. Kumo shinobi were all apprehensive when it came to peace, largely because it meant that another war was brewing on the horizon. 

And at the end of the day, war was a racket. It brought a measure of economic prosperity to Kumo, and it wasn't likely to end in Yugito's lifetime unless something were to be done about it. 

No Kumo shinobi was discreetly happy about the fact that they were generally regarded as with the ire of the whole shinobi world. But Yugito knew, she  _knew_ that the kidnapping and the jutsu theft were the result of the bijuu being sealed. Kumo had not always been the power hungry, warmongering nation of the world.They had not always been a village willing to steal children to gain the upper hand in battle. 

That ruthlessness had its time and place in the Warring States Period, and even then, such machinations were still frowned upon. In this day and age, where peace had hesitantly settled over the land, there was no more room for Kumo to behave as it had in the past. And unless another war broke out, Kumo would keep sticking and poking at other villages, desperate to be the strongest until another conflict broke out. 

Yugito had been a child during the last war, but she had not survived it unscathed. She thinks of her genin team and the mass of paper cranes taking up space on the low table in her living room. 

They were sweet children. But Yugito had put them through hell as an instructor. She had done awful things to them, had turned them on each other and on herself, on fellow shinobi in the name of making them tools of the village. Sweet Hie was too skilled with raiton to not catch the attention of the specialists in the village; he would be drafted into ANBU before he was fifteen, and then - well, who knew what would happen after that?

Ichigo was much too pretty for her own good; she'd be slated for honeypot missions the moment she reached the age of consent. And cheerful Kikyo was the child of deep cover spies. She would be out in the world, a storm cloud for Kumo gathering information and reporting back with enough infrequency that she could be designated as KIA if not for her name remaining listed on the active duty roster. 

She does not want to see her team (her kits, Matatabi had called them, and Yugito had come to think of them that way, too) die in a war. 

"You would join them if you could, I know," Maneki says, interrupting Yugito's train of thought. 

She looks to the woman she has called grandmother almost all her life, and Maneki's eyes are sharp as a cat's planning an attack. 

"But as you are now, you would be of little use to them."

It stings, but the truth often does. But there is something distinct in what Maneki is not saying that makes Yugito blink. 

"But I could be of use to the spirits of the mountain," she says, realization dawning on her. 

Maneki nods, a satisfied look crossing her face. 

The people of the mountain shrine were both autonomous and a portion of the Kumo citizenry. It would be - difficult, yes, but perhaps - perhaps if Yugito renounced her claim to being a Kumo kunoichi, she could advocate more on behalf of the spirits of the mountain, the bakeneko and the nekomata in turn. 

"A-sama respects strength," Maneki murmurs, "that and conviction. If he saw you as a tool when you were a jinchuuriki, now he sees you as a broken weapon. Your advice will either mean nothing to him, or it will carry great weight."

Yugito purses her lips; if she knows A, it will likely be the latter one beyond the shadow of a doubt. He was a militant, outspoken man. But if he had only seen Yugito as a broken weapon, then he would not have allowed her to continue training despite her newly ruined chakra coils.

She was still useful to an extent. It didn't mean her opinion mattered, but it did mean something. Yugito just wasn't sure what that something was yet. 

"Above all," Maneki continues, "A-sama is a man that cares about his people. And it is because he loves his people so deeply that he is willing to justify even the most reprehensible acts. That is a trait that every Raikage has possessed to a different degree. It is in him."

"And any part of a man," Yugito says, looking down at the scroll before her. 

"Can be used against him," Maneki answers as Hisa climbs onto her shoulders. "What will you do, Yugito-chan?"

She purses her lips, and wonders about the mountain priests. If Matatabi gave birth to all of the cat spirits, then there was an unnamed mass of Matatabi's chakra still at work in the world. Diluted yes, and not as powerful, but still there, thrumming. It was weakened now that it was cut off from its source, but it still existed. 

The only person that A would listen to less than a jinchuuriki was a former jinchuuriki. Yugito could mold chakra to the degree that a civilian could; A and the other shinobi of Kumo looked to strength as an indication of character.

Yugito was strong, but at this point, all she had was her own will. She needed chakra, even if it was borrowed like the senjutsu chakra still thrumming in her veins. Only enough to make a show of force. Only enough to ensure that she would be listened to. 

Her coils had not been preserved during the extraction, but Sakura's initial healings had ensured that  _something_ was still rattling around inside of Yugito. Perhaps not the ability to mold chakra well enough for ninjutsu, but strong enough so that she could focus her chakra well enough for exercises. Or for accidentally transporting herself into a room full of missing nin and one Konoha shinobi. 

Perhaps if she had one of Matatabi's children around to aid her, to help her  _convince_ A that his way of thinking was flawed, it might work. A show of strength. She was not a jinchuuriki, but would it be possible for her to wield the power of her bijuu's children?

"Even broken clocks are right twice a day, Maneki-obaa-sama," Yugito says, leaning over the promissory scroll in front of her. From it she can almost feel grass underneath her feet, and her fingernails sharpening into claws like they used to, when Matatabi made her home inside of Yugito's stomach. "I think I will remind A-sama of as much."

* * *

Becoming a Toad Sage sounded like a lot more trouble than it was worth. And Naruto loved the toads. They were an interesting group of characters, all of them a little alike because they had spent so much time together. And they were all willing to be helpful when it came to Naruto's training. They were good friends, valuable allies in battle. 

But something about their senjutsu rubbed Naruto the wrong way. He couldn't say precisely what it was, but it seemed odd in some way. Not in a way that he could put his finger on, but it was something that settled firmly in the pit of his stomach and told him to pursue an alternate route. 

Naruto wasn't sure of what route that would actually  _be_. He was aware he could make summoning contracts with multiple sage regions, but there weren't really any others that suited his fancy. Part of the reason (at least initially) that he had made his summoning contract with the toads was because it had been convenient. He hadn't really been the type to do research when he was twelve, or when he was thirteen; it had seemed like the best decision to make at the time, so he made it. 

And he doesn't regret it. That couldn't be further from the truth. If he could go back and do it all again, he's positive he would. But now as he thinks of Sakura and her slugs and Neji and his falcons, he wonders if there isn't another creature out there that might suit him the way Sakura and Neji's summons suited them. 

Jiraiya had been plenty helpful about talking to him about sage mode and about the many other summoning creatures of the world. There were monkeys and turtles, koi, weasels, spiders, owls, pandas, oxen; more than Naruto could count and more still after Jiraiya got his second wind.

And while they interested him to a degree (the monkey for nostalgia's sake, and the weasels because they seemed clever), none of them seemed to call his name. 

The question of summons had stayed on his mind all the way through their journey back to the heart of Fire Country, back into Konoha's territory. So had the question of Sakura. 

He had meant it when he had told her that he'd try to understand. And he had. He could grasp why Jiraiya had taken to the road instead of staying in the village. If Naruto had learned anything in his years away from home, it was that there are many ways to protect the things you hold dear to you. Jiraiya had figured out his way by exploring the world and reporting information back home. 

But Sakura had never seemed like the type. When Sasuke had left, it had almost been like something inside of her had fallen asleep. Not like she had given up, but like part of her had disappeared. Part of the reason Naruto left was to wake up that fighting spirit he knew was still nestled at the core of her, in there somewhere. 

And now that he thinks about it, hadn't he abandoned Sakura, too? It was a different kind of leaving, one that promised of a return home, but a leaving nevertheless. Hadn't he owed Sakura more than that, after everything they had been through together?

He hadn't even thought about it then, when he was still a kid, and too hellbent on bringing Sasuke home and making Sakura smile again. But had he hurt her when he left her?

That thought makes him abruptly guilty. It hadn't been his intention. Sakura was one of the last people on the planet he would ever intentionally hurt. Couldn't they have gotten stronger together? Couldn't they have trained together, become a two man cell, and trained until they could fight back to back with their eyes closed, in pursuit of their common goal?

Why hadn't he thought of that then? He had thought he was in love with Sakura when he was younger, had thought that his leaving the village was to protect her smile, to ensure that he brought home the person she was in love with. But was he really in love with her if he was willing to leave her behind?

The question haunts him back into Fire Country, unsettles him and makes him nervous. He's less chatty than he usually is, preferring to let the Pervy Sage do all the talking. He trains halfheartedly, wondering if Sakura grew up and got stronger because she was tired of waiting for him to come home or if it was because she finally decided she didn't need him anymore. 

But the look on her face, the way she had hugged him; those weren't signs that she was tired of him, or that she didn't need him anymore. There was affection there, more than there had been when they had parted in their genin days. 

Naruto had thought that he had changed, but what did his Rasengan have on being a sage? What did wanting to become Hokage have on saving the world? 

It occurs to him then that his quest to bring Sasuke home is very, very small when compared to Sakura's so-called mission. Naruto wonders if he's been childish, focusing on only one person, while Sakura is wandering the world with only Neji watching her back.

Abandoning his pursuit of bringing Sasuke home doesn't even occur to him. Sasuke was his first friend, his first love, his first comrade, and ally. There was nowhere Sasuke belonged more than home where he belonged. With people that loved him, instead of those that wanted to use him. 

But maybe he has been a little naive to think that Sakura would wait as he has all this time. Would focus all his energy to one point at the expense of all else. 

Naruto knew it was possible to want more than one thing at a time. He wanted to become Hokage. He wanted Sasuke to return to the village. He wanted to know who his parents were. He wanted to find his place in the world. And all of those wants were constantly in motion, pushing and pulling at each other, desperate for more of Naruto's attention. 

But saving the world? Naruto hadn't really even known the world was in  _danger._

The thought of his ignorance, willful or imposed follows him beyond the front gates of Konoha. His initial rush of joy at being home is dulled somewhat, not because he knows that Sasuke is not there, but because he is painfully aware of the fact that  _Sakura_ is not either. 

Jiraiya claps him on the shoulder, promising him a homecoming feast once they check in with Tsunade. Naruto nods absently, and wonders about Kakashi-sensei. 

The streets of Konoha are familiar, well worn beneath his feet. He doesn't need to look up to see where he's going. It's a terribly melancholy mood he's in, reflective or otherwise. He isn't sure if he should be happy that he's home, when two of the most important people that  _made it_ home are no longer within its walls. 

There's still Iruka, who will be happy to see him. And Kakashi-sensei. Kiba will probably be glad to see him as well, and so will Shikamaru and Chouji. Not having Neji around will be - it will be odd to say the least. He always rounded out the dynamic when all the boys were together. But Bushy Brows should still be in the village, and he was always game to be as obnoxious as physically possible. 

Then there were the girls, who he hadn't been all that close with. Ino was essentially a blonde haired Sakura. Tenten was funny, had helped Naruto with his bukijutsu whenever he felt bold enough to ask after joint training. Hinata, he didn't know so well, but she had always seemed nice enough, and Naruto knew she was a capable person after seeing her in the Chuunin Exams the first time. 

And maybe Sasuke and Sakura weren't in the village, but there were still people Naruto called his friends. And they would be happy to see him, wouldn't they?

He's halfway up the spiral staircase in the Hokage Tower when he hears his granny's voice, and a grin splits out over his face. 

"What the  _hell_?!" she barks, and it's so loud, so vehemently  _annoyed_ in the way that only Tsunade can be that finally jars Naruto out of his melancholy. 

He's home, isn't he? He's  _home._ And Tsunade may be his family by distant blood, but it's still blood. And besides that blood, there are still his year mates, his allies, his teachers, aren't there?

He perks up almost immediately, and he can hear Jiraiya chuckle at him. 

"Yeah," the old man says. "I'm glad to hear she hasn't changed either."

Naruto laughs right back at his teacher and jogs the rest of the way up the stairs, his excitement pushing him forward. If Neji got assigned a bodyguard detail for Sakura, maybe Naruto could request one as well. He didn't know what exactly her mission was, but if it meant protecting the world, Naruto was all in. And maybe once that was done, he could convince her to come with him to bring Sasuke home. 

It wasn't a perfect plan, but it was a plan. And even having something as tenuous as that settling in his mind made Naruto feel better. 

"I could hear you all the way down the hall, baa-chan!" he hollers, all sense of propriety lost now that he's finally back to himself.

He throws the door open, a toothy grin on his face, only to discover a minor tornado has swept through the Hokage's office. 

Three ANBU have a sword each to Gaara's older sister Temari, and she's changed too. She's dressed all in black, and she's been disarmed, her battle fan thrown across the room. She looks as panicked as she did when the invasion happened, and she and Kankurō had lost control and sight of Gaara. 

There are a handful of other jounin shinobi in there, mostly those that Naruto doesn't recognize. Tenten is there as well, looking shocked, her mouth half open as if she had been interrupted right in the middle of saying something. 

"Baa-chan?" Naruto asks, looking to where Tsunade is sitting in her desk. 

She isn't in the eye of the storm, no, but her stillness makes the entire room revolve around her. She sits there, her hands folded together in front of her mouth, her red painted nails a sharp pop of color in the room. 

"You've got terrible timing, brat," she says, eyes not leaving Temari for a moment. She raises a hand and flicks it, and the ANBU in the room move away from Temari. 

The woman's eyes stay glassy and wide with fright, but she doesn't once look away from Tsunade. 

"They've attacked Tsunade-sama, and we need reinforcements," she pleads. "Time is of the essence. I was sent when the first attack was made -,"

"And arrived here with a piece of fuinjutsu that is supposed to be for use by Konoha shinobi, only," Tsunade interrupts, eyeing Tenten, visibly annoyed. 

The brown haired girl shuts her still open mouth, chastised. 

"Please reprimand her later," Temari implores. "Akatsuki is trying to abduct the Kazekage!"

"I will reprimand my shinobi in a manner that I see fit, Temari."

The world falls out from underneath Naruto's feet. 

"Every moment we sit here and talk semantics is another moment off Gaara's life, Tsunade-sama!"

"Akatsuki?" Naruto asks, the word awful and heavy in his mouth. "They're attacking Suna? They’ve got Gaara?"

Tsunade looks at him a second time, and heaves a sigh. She turns her gaze to Tenten, and the brown haired girl immediately clicks her heels together in a salute. 

"Assemble the other members of Team Gai," she instructs the woman, before barking to Jiraiya, "and you, send one of your toads to the Hatake brat."

She rubs a hand over her face in a rare show of fatigue. Naruto looks to Jiraiya, who has already summoned Gamakichi to fetch Kakashi. 

"Welcome home, Naruto," Tsunade says, her mouth twisted in an unhappy grimace. "You have a mission."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are so many stupid puns/plays on words in this chapter lmao  
> sorry for the wait! hope you enjoyed all this exposition. shit's about to smack the fan in the Face.  
> And! Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. I appreciate you very much, and it made me v happy <3


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you think that hit will be enough to push him to the cliffs?" 
> 
> She nods. 
> 
> "You set him up," she says, "and I'll knock him down."

Nao peers down at her. The skin on Sakura's arms is prickled with the cold air, taken from her memories of Shikkotsu. 

The pale purple slug in front of her is a vision, compiled from her own chakra and Sakura's memories. It had been Nao in her mind, telling her what Onyomi-Saiken had known about Yugito and Matatabi those many weeks ago, before Sakura had bolted out into the night to find them. Now, things were much different. 

"They are lost," the purple slug says.

Her tone is matter-of-fact. No room for argument or protest, because she is telling the truth.

"Isobu is lost to my parent and their siblings the way that Matatabi is lost."

Sakura swallows but refuses to let her teeth chatter. Had it really been this cold in the forest her first time around? Or was this another way she was punishing herself? Nao had no need for such manipulations. No, this chill was all Sakura's doing, her guilt manifesting in the low temperature. 

"Yagura is dead."

It is a confirmation that Sakura did not want, but knows that she needs regardless. She breathes in, and wonders if she is making herself breathe around the ice in her lungs. 

She is naked in front of Nao, as she had been those many days ago, as she had been nude in front of all the slugs and spirits of Shikkotsu. 

"Be grateful you have lost only three and not four," Nao says. 

Matatabi, Yagura, and Isobu gone. But Yugito remained. Sakura swallows; yes, that was a kind of victory, wasn't it? Her first one. It seemed so far away now, like it had occurred years rather than months ago. 

"You have only one uncle and two aunts left to sway to our cause. Chōmei-baa-sama will be reasonable. Shukaku-jii-sama will not be. Kurama-baa-sama…"

The slug mulls it over for a moment. 

"My nine tailed aunt will be of more help than we had initially anticipated."

Sakura pulls a few strands of hair out of her eyes, surprised with the weight of her hair. It pools around her feet, whisper soft. 

"Kurama-sama," she breathes. "She's sealed inside of Naruto."

Nao nods slowly. 

"She is the reason your cousin found you and your Hyūga with the Toad Sage Jiraiya."

It's a pleasant surprise. Sakura hadn't been very well aware that she was receiving much help from the bijuu themselves. She's happy to know that they're collaborating with each other to such a degree, ready to help each other, to help  _her_ help them. 

"Focus on Shukaku-jii-sama," Nao instructs. "I think now, after all that has happened, he may finally be willing to accept our help."

There's a distant rumble, one that makes the quiet place in Sakura's mind shake. The noise wants to drag her up into consciousness, but Sakura looks to Nao. The purple slug's eyes are narrowed, and she stretches out, placing her forehead against Sakura's in a rare show of affection. 

The smell of Shikkotsu fills her nose; wet grass, clean open air, and peach syrup. It's enough to make her want to go back, or at least to stay in this safe place with Nao for as long as she can. But she knows that she won't be able to. There is something brewing outside of her mind. She and her summons both know it is something she must attend to. 

"Do not fail us again."

She doesn't need to be told why. If they get Shukaku, they'll have the first three bijuu. They'll go after Son Gokū and Rōshi next, which meant they'd be gunning right for the family Sakura managed to gather to her only weeks ago. 

She swallows hard and looks up at Nao. 

"I won't."

* * *

She opens her eyes as another explosion fills the world with sound.

She sits up, eyes on the covered window as she carefully extracts the IV sticking into her arm. She's still dressed in her fighting clothes from Kiri, torn and all. There isn't any time to change. She gets up and shoves her feet into her sandals, grateful that they're just beside her bed. 

When she gets to the door, she stops, startled by the garment that's hung up on it. It's a haori, one startlingly similar to her shishou's. It's a soft purple color, almost the same shade as Nao. And on the back, inside of a white circle that could only be a reference to the Haruno circle, is 'Shikkotsurin' in white, against a pale green background. 

It must be Neji, because the others are outside of the village, and how would they have known that Sakura had been thinking of finding a way to identify herself? That she had taken Jiraiya's words to heart? She reaches out and hesitantly touches the material, marveling at how the purple of the jacket is probably a very close match to the diamonds on her forehead. 

How had he found the time to get such a thing commissioned? More importantly, how long had she been asleep, that such a gift could have been so easily procured? She doesn't remember falling into unconsciousness, she only really remembers waking up naked in her mind, with Nao staring down at her like she was a child that had misbehaved, or was about to. 

Now, Sakura purses her lips, and promises to thank Neji later. She tugs the haori off the hanger and slides it onto her shoulders. Then, she jerks open the door, only to find Neji on the other side. 

They say nothing to each other. Sakura swallows, and meets his gaze. He nods at her, reaching out to tug the fabric a little higher onto her shoulder before he turns and leads the way down the hall. 

When they get outside, it's clear that the fighting has been centralized to the civilian quarters for a reason. It's meant to defang Gaara, to shove him into a corner if at all possible. If he can't unleash the full measure of his attacking power because he's worried about harming his population, then he'll be easy to overpower. 

Overhead in the late night, a pale white bird swoops over and under itself, darting away from a long tail of sand. She narrows her eyes at the black cloak and its red clouds, fluttering against the night sky.  

"Do we tell the others?" Neji asks. 

Sakura purses her lips. The other jinchuuriki were tucked away in an oasis town some ways away from Suna proper. If anything, they were safer away from the fighting rather than closer to it. 

She forms the seals for a summoning, and at once, Sango pops into existence before her. 

"Find Utakata, and the others. Tell them to stay put. If we need back-up, we'll call for it."

Sango, unusually somber, only nods once, before she slithers away.

"Let's go then," she says. 

They follow the trail of sand towards where a small contingent of Suna shinobi are gathered, Kankurō included. He waves them over, and it's clear that the concern in his eyes is less for them and more for his brother. 

"What's happening?" Sakura asks. "Why aren't you helping him?"

Kankurō only shakes his head. 

"We'd only get in the way," he replies. "We've been destroying whatever explosives manage to escape Gaara's reach. It's the best we can do right now."

Sakura narrows her eyes. It sounds nonsensical, like cowardice. But she knows that Suna shinobi know better how to help their Kazekage than she would. She's never fought alongside Gaara, has never had to call him a comrade. She fought against him, to the extent that holding up a kunai against someone could be called fighting them. But Kankurō probably knew better. 

"What can we do to help?" Neji asks. 

Kankurō gestures upwards at the Akatsuki member fleeing Gaara's sand. 

"You can use those eyes of yours to give us a better idea of his attack patterns. You'll be able to see when he's gonna bank right or left faster than we can," he replies. "Tell us when he's going to drop something and where, and we'll take care of the rest."

Neji nods, and activates his Byakugan. 

"And me?" Sakura asks. 

Kankurō levels her with a look. His eyes flicker up to her forehead, and then down to the new haori settled on her shoulders. 

"Got any ideas?" he returns. 

Sakura looks up at the fight overhead. The sound of things exploding has petered off for the most part, but she's aware of the way that the sand around the village is being drawn up, used in Gaara's defense of the village. 

"We need to pull the fight away from here," she says. "Into the cliffs. It'll give Gaara more space to fight."

"I thought of that, too," Kankurō replies, folding his arms across his chest. "But we'd need a decent enough distraction to push the Akatsuki guy away. He's just about as fast as Gaara. If he can outrun that sand, he can outrun us and double back on his attack."

Sakura rolls her lips together between her teeth and tries to think of a decent plan. 

"That's not even to mention whether or not he has back-up outside of the village," Neji adds, eyes narrowed as the fight above continues. "Akatsuki members do not travel alone."

That hadn't occurred to her, but now that she thinks about it, there should be another person somewhere in the village or outside of it. Someone that was waiting to help their team member get the Kazekage back to wherever it was that they extracted the bijuu. 

"Neji," Sakura begins, "can you find the second member of Akatsuki?" 

"I can," he says, "but I'll need a second pair of eyes."

He summons Hiroshiki with a bit of blood and sign weaving. The falcon screeches, nipping lightly at Neji's ear before taking to the wind. 

"A second Akatsuki member is somewhere nearby," Neji tells the bird. "Find him, and report back as soon as possible."

Hiroshiki cries out a second time before circling, and rising high into the air. Sakura nods, watching him go before looking back at Kankurō. 

"Split up your men however you see fit," she says, "but when Hiroshiki finds the second Akatsuki member, you should go after them."

Kankurō nods, looking vaguely bemused at being ordered around. 

"And what're you going to do?" he asks. 

Sakura pushes her sleeves up, and summons Hitomi. The slug pops into the world and slides up until they settle on Sakura's neck.

"I'm going to be a distraction."

* * *

Hitomi takes her straight to Gaara's side. Sakura stays crouched down, well aware of how bad an idea it is to sneak up on a shinobi with a history of violent paranoia. 

"Gaara-san," she says. "Or should I say Kazekage-sama. Good to see you."

He looks down at her with those kohl drawn eyes of his, curious. He isn't showing even the faintest sign of stress, despite the fact that he is fighting for an entire village of people. 

"Sakura-san," he replies, and that's a pleasant surprise. It had been some time since the Suna Chuunin Exams, but it was nice to know that she had made such an impression on him. "What are you doing here?" 

She smiles at him, carefully rising to her feet. She watches the way the blond Akatsuki member moves. He seems to be a fan of unpredictability, ducking low and rising terribly high before spinning just out of Gaara's reach. It would be fun to watch such a display if lives weren't on the line. 

"I'm here to help," she says. "We need to push him outside of the village proper. It'll be easier to defeat him there. Less chance of casualties."

Gaara nods.

"Do you have a plan?"

Sakura cracks her knuckles, looking up. It was much  harder to transport towards a moving object than a still one, that much she had learned during the fighting she had done in Kiri. There was nothing still about this Akatsuki member. His movements were erratic, but had a precision about them that spoke of a pattern that Sakura hadn't been able to crack yet. 

"I can push him back," she begins, still working out the plan in her mind. "Maybe get a good hit in, then you use your Sand Coffin to get him to the cliff. We can take him down for sure there."

She had no doubt that Gaara could fight this person to a standstill; two long range fighters up against each other was a war of attrition no matter how you looked at it, and Suna was Gaara's home turf. But if Sakura could land even one good hit, it would be enough to ensure that nobody else was stolen from her. 

"Can you get me close to him?" she asks. 

Just in front of her feet, a disc of sand coalesces. She and Gaara share a glance, before hesitantly, Sakura steps onto it. It lifts her into the air slowly, then quickly, and she drops to one knee to maintain her balance. 

One hit. If she stuck enough power behind it, she could definitely get him towards the edges of the village. 

Sakura opens her hands and balls them again into fists, rubbing her thumb over the old and new scars on her right hand. She sucks in a slow breath and centers herself on the disc of sand. Gaara must see something in her shift, because the moment she's settled the disc rockets forward as fast as the wind can take her. 

 _'He tracks upward,'_ she thinks, ' _but he's focused on keeping the fight in the village, so he swings back around. Over himself.'_

It's a piece of it, but not enough. Sakura narrows her eyes as Gaara's disc drags her forward, and focuses just a little bit more chakra to the soles of her feet so she can hold on. 

She's closer, but not terribly close. She can see the man's one blue eye, and one covered by some kind of scoping device. He seems surprised to see her, as if he hadn't anticipated someone would join in his fight with the Kazekage. 

Gaara takes the initiative; a twin beam of sand rises from the desert floor, mirroring the one carrying Sakura. Both dart towards the Akatsuki shinobi. Sakura has a moment to appreciate Gaara's own cleverness; he's herding the black cloaked man into her grasp. 

It's clear the black cloaked man sees it, too. 

He launches a piece of white clay towards Sakura, and she leaps up and away from it before she can think twice. She launches herself as high as she can go, her launching leg just barely missing getting singed by the small explosion. 

She falls through the air for a stomach dropping moment before her feet hit one soft layer of sand, and then a second. By the time her toes touch the third, she's harnessing chakra into her feet, and this time, she sticks the landing. She doesn't bother sparing a glance over her shoulder to thank Gaara for the assist, there isn't time. 

She breathes in through her nose, focusing hard. Now that there are two pillars of sand gunning for him and one of them has an actual mind of its own, the Akatsuki shinobi seems a little more wary. Sakura wants to congratulate him on his sense of self preservation. 

She drops to one knee and quickly forms the seals for a sensory disruption genjutsu. Enough to make him think that there are three arms of sand, and that she's attacking from the opposite direction she'll actually be heading in. She weaves her chakra like a net and throws it out across the air, reaching out for his chakra so that she can disrupt it. 

The man looks at her, and a mean smirk curls over his features. He doesn't have to lift his fingers in the half Rat seal to dispel the genjutsu. 

"I like your style, un," he bellows, cocky, "but you'll have to try a little harder than that."

His words don't exactly line up with what he's doing. He barrels towards her on his bird, but he doesn't toss another clay explosive at her. 

 _'There's a lag,'_ she thinks, pressing her lips together.  _'But how long is it?'_

Gaara's sand yanks her away from him, and Sakura jerks forward as she is vaulted back. He follows it with two more pillars of sand pursuing the blond man, and Sakura feels her hair whip by her face as Gaara tugs her back to him. 

"He has a short recovery period between one round of explosives and the next," she reports, standing in the air beside him. "If we can hit him during that window, that's our best bet."

Gaara nods, not once taking his eyes off of his opponent. 

"Put me in with him."

Sakura still has memories of Gaara's Sand Coffin from the Konoha Chuunin Exams. The memories aren't exactly pretty. She had thought that she had dealt with that, had gotten over it a long time ago, but the plan of attack in her mind drags its belly over an acute sense of claustrophobia, taunting her. 

"If we get him in your sand between one explosion and the next, I can do the rest."

"Do you think that hit will be enough to push him to the cliffs?" 

She nods. 

"You set him up," she says, "and I'll knock him down."

He doesn't need to be told twice. He lifts his palms and without even a pinch between his eyebrows, Gaara drags up at least half the sand from Suna's desert floor.

The sight of it makes Sakura's jaw drop; the raw power of a jinchuuriki, of a bijuu, honed towards one specific technique was incredible to see. It made her wonder about how much Utakata had held back during their stint in Kiri. It made her wonder how much Naruto would be able to do when he reached his full potential. 

"Can you feel where he is in that big thing?" 

Gaara nods as his sand slowly begins to trap the Akatsuki member. 

"Can you _throw_ me in?" she asks. "I can take the damage, but I'm gonna need a running start from the middle of the air."

The Kazekage finally turns to her in the midst of his jutsu.

"You can take the damage?"

Sakura blinks, second-guesses herself. Does she sound crazy? The sand above them has to be several meters thick at least. If she activated her senjutsu chakra, she'd be able to take the hit. She had to be careful with how recklessly she had been using it lately; the fighting in Kiri, the healings on the road. She would have to sit down and start storing more before long. 

Besides, it would be worth it. It  _had_ to be worth it. She wasn't going to lose Gaara. Not after losing Yagura. 

"I can take it," she replies, nodding resolutely. 

The disc of sand beneath her feet widens somewhat and Sakura crouches down on it. 

"Konoha shinobi," he mutters. 

But that's all he can say before Sakura is being charged forward in the night sky. The sphere of sand has encompassed him entirely. It doesn't take a tactician's mind to guess that any shinobi who worked with explosives as extensively as this one did, probably had a contingency plan for being captured, and an explosive one at that. 

_'His next one will probably be to escape since he's cut off from a direct attack right now.'_

Sakura lifts one hand to Hitomi on her neck to check on the slug. She drops it, activating the thrumming chakra in her bones. She raises her arms to her face to protect it from the worst of the impact. 

 _'There won't be much time,'_ she thinks.  _'I'll have to get in, get his location, hit him, and follow him out.'_

She sucks in a slow breath, wind and sand whipping at her face as she rockets forward. Closer. Closer. The massive dome of sand soon fills the entire field of her vision. When she is a blink away from its surface, the disc beneath her speeds up, and Sakura covers her face. 

The impact is specific, jarring, but there isn't a spare moment to focus on it. Sakura drops her arms from her face, the disc of sand having coalesced behind her to patch up the hole she made with her entry. She flies forward, winding her right arm back. 

The Akatsuki shinobi's eyes widen when he sees her. He darts a gaze down at his hand and back up at her, then throws a little white bird directly into her face. 

She can't pull back, can't veer off course. Not without losing her balance. 

 _'Hitomi,_ ' she thinks.  _'On the head of his bird.'_

_'On our way.'_

Sakura doesn't blink. She's vaulted through space, and the burst of heat and air behind her from the exploding bird propels her farther forward as she slams her fist into the Akatsuki shinobi's face. 

Her foot touches down on the bird below them, but the shinobi goes flying. The force of her punch sends him across the massive dome, and Gaara must feel them from inside, because a pocket opens, and the Akatsuki shinobi spirals out of it. 

She falls momentarily, but a disc of sand comes beneath her feet, and shoots her off after it. When she leaves the sphere, the large white clay bird goes to follow, but Gaara's sand crushes it in on itself. 

The Akatsuki shinobi is dazed, but clearly tries to gain his bearings, but Sakura can see the moment he recognizes that he's been all but shoved out of the valley that Suna is nestled in, back towards the cliffs. 

From the corner of her eye, Sakura can see Gaara, having taken to the wind as well. She shakes out her right fist, watching as the Akatsuki shinobi flips midair. His hands are held close to himself, meaning he still needs time to build another explosive. Sakura turns her head to Gaara, and he nods minutely. 

They shoot off forward, and Sakura forms the seals for a Water Bullet. It's difficult to tug moisture from the dry Suna air, but she forces her chakra to do more of the work. She spits the suiton at her opponent's back. 

Simultaneously, Gaara maneuvers them so that they flank him, and Sakura focuses her Water Bullet on the left arm of the shinobi. He scowls at her before he throws an array of small clay figures at her, each of them popping close to her face. They're startling, but they're much smaller than what he sent at them before.

A good sign.

It does make her bite the inside of her cheek; her suiton had little effect on him, which meant that whatever transformation he was using to create his explosions was probably earth based. She wasn't especially strong with katon, and didn't want to risk feeding the fires of his explosions by throwing more fire at him.

_'Why are you fighting on his terms?'_

Sakura's hand darts up to Hitomi's back as the slug asks the question. And Sakura - Sakura doesn't have a good answer.

She's a close range fighter. Taijutsu is her specialty after medical ninjutsu. All other types of ninjutsu came afterwards; her fairly weak suiton was proof enough of that. She may have had a hard time fighting in Kiri, but she gave more injuries than she sustained. And in this fight? She's only landed one punch.

Why was she pretending she was a long distance fighter, when close range face breaking was what she was good at? What her shishou had passed down to her?

She pats Hitomi's back, and lowers her center on the sand disc. The Akatsuki shinobi has fastened himself a new bird, and she doesn't need Hitomi to tell her where he's going next.

_'Down. Then upward, over himself.'_

Sakura leaps off of the disc of sand just as the Akatsuki shinobi takes a nosedive. She falls through the air, and rears her leg up in an axe kick that would make even her shishou weep. 

When the blond man vaults back upwards over himself, Sakura's kick misses his body, but it hits his bird. The force of her strike detonates the bird prematurely, and the shockwave sends the man spiraling finally towards the cliffs. 

She spares a flinch for the burn of the shockwave, but her senjutsu chakra takes the brunt of it. Gaara's sand comes up to support her momentarily, but they are both rapidly careening towards the cliffs, finally following their target. 

Sakura hits the ground running, sparing nothing. They were on her turf now. There was enough land on this cliff face for Sakura to obliterate six ways from Sunday. She runs him down, and expects it when he vaults a small handful of oddly shaped explosives at her face. 

_'Left, Hitomi.'_

She's there, breath pounding in her lungs. She has a moment to worry that her forcing a close quarters fight will inconvenience Gaara, but there's sand whipping at the edges of her vision, cutting off the Akatsuki shinobi as Sakura stays hard on his tail. 

"You wanna play, un?" the man asks, turning on his heel and standing his ground. "Then why don't we?"

He shows her his palms, and she valiantly forces down an instinctive urge to vomit when his hands spew white clay. It makes her stop in her tracks; no living shinobi ran into an attack like that without having a game plan. 

The white mess on the ground coalesces into two strange, bumpy creatures that lumber after her like the stuff of nightmares. Sakura engages, shoving a fist through the one that comes upon her right, and a kick through the one that comes to her left. She tries to pass them once her attack is over, but when the creatures rise steadily into new  _four_ new forms instead of two, she takes a quick leap back to buy some time. 

She prepares the seals for a summoning, thinking fast. If they had managed to get him this far away from Suna proper without his back up showing their face so far, that meant Neji and Kankurō had found his partner. 

"Zesshi nensan!"

Sakura advances, spitting Katsuyu's slime as she goes. She aims the spray at one of the creatures, focusing on it until it's nothing more than a puddle of acid at her feet. When it stays down instead of multiplying, Sakura gets to work on the other three. 

She catches it, the way the blond man must be still to prepare his attacks. He's quick on his feet, but he had the advantage when he was on his bird. His quick evasions were his best defense while his explosives were his offensive technique. But on the ground, he's a sitting duck. 

 _'Keep him on the ground,'_ she thinks.  _'We gotta keep him on the ground.'_

While Sakura takes care of his clay clones, Gaara barrels into him with spears of sand. She sees the man leap up and back, skirting further away from the cliff edge and onto rocky terrain. 

Sakura pulls two kunai from her holster and throws both in rapid succession, Gaara's sand parting to make way for her attack. The blond man looks incredibly unimpressed, but when Sakura substitutes herself for the knife that has flown over his shoulder, she's sure it's worth the surprise. 

She goes low, aiming a sweeping kick at his legs. He jumps up into the air, hands dug deep in his pouches of clay, but Sakura lashes out her arm and gets a hand around his ankle. She pulls on it with both hands and throws him, as hard as she can manage, towards Gaara. 

The young Kazekage catches the foreign shinobi in a cocoon of sand, that slowly, begins to constrict. Sakura forms the seals for a summoning and pulls Fudo from the forest. She can feel the strain on her reserves begin, and she promises herself that she'll finish this fight as soon as she can.

She hasn't had much rest between Kiri and now this, not much time to recover, and it's beginning to show. Her rampant ninjutsu healings were going to make her sick before long, if she didn't let her body heal in its own time instead of forcing it.

She lets out a low breath and slams her hands onto the earth, mixing earth and water, tugging Fudo's lovely crystals from the surface. She drags them up as sharp as she can make them, a long line of them heading towards the dome where the Akatsuki member is captured. 

Then, there is a moment of quiet. 

A bead of sweat rolls down Sakura's nose, and drips onto her lip. Was that it? She rose to her feet, laying a hand on Fudo's back, opening her mouth to check in with him when an explosion cracks Gaara's coffin. 

She looks to the Kazekage for a split second before she presses her hands back to the ground and yanks on her chakra, bringing up a dome of crystal around Gaara's sand coffin. He nods at her, and covers her crystal with his sand. They go on and on like that, until they've built a prison thirty layers thick, and Sakura's mouth begins to dry with exhaustion. 

The Akatsuki member breaks through them almost as fast as they put them up. Sakura forces another layer of bright green rock up from the earth below when she sees a change in him. It's subtle, but it's one she recognizes. 

His veins are darkening. Close to the same way hers do when she activates her senjutsu chakra. 

Her hindbrain screams that something is very  _wrong_ , and she scrambles to her feet. 

_'What on earth - ,'_

_'Sakura-chan, you and your cousin need to move -,'_

"Gaara!" she says, shouting over the voices of the slugs in her mind. "Throw him! Throw him as far as you can!"

She wraps the blond Akatsuki member in a cage of green crystal, and Gaara takes the suggestion, using his sand to lift and vault the man away from the village. His sand warps around her crystal shell, volleying the cage up higher and higher into the air, until with one great shove of his hands, Gaara  _throws_ Deidara across the desert. 

The final explosion nearly blinds them both. 

She sees the sand and crystal begin to crack, light forcing its way through, and she bolts for Gaara. She doesn't even need to tell Hitomi where to take her. Suddenly, she's just there, beside him, tugging him down to take cover. 

Debris from their combined shells scatters to the wind, and Sakura doesn't want to think about where pieces of the man's body have fallen, if any had managed not to get incinerated in the blast. The light from the explosion reaches out into the sky in a bright star that pierces the sky, and cleaves hard into the mountains that surround Sunagakure. 

After a minute, the light goes out. She opens her eyes, and looks to Gaara, who has patiently endured her sudden mother bear death drop to safety. 

"Sorry," she says, sheepishly loosening her grip. 

He shakes his head. 

"It's instinctual, to want to protect your comrades," he says, nodding to the left. 

Sakura turns, and sees the massive wall of sand that had been erected to protect them. She looks back at Gaara, and she smiles. 

"Wanna go see the new canyon?" she asks. 

* * *

 It's massive, comically so. The explosion had an easy ten kilometer range outwards, and downwards. She looks out at the scar on the landscape, oddly smooth for something created by a shinobi so volatile. 

"Do you hear that?" 

Gaara's voice startles her some, but Sakura quickly regains her composure. She had looked over them both for a customary healing, moreso for Gaara than for herself. He hadn't sustained anything other than fatigue, which was best left to unassisted recovery. 

The hike to the new canyon ten kilometers from Suna had been surprisingly brief; Sakura had offered Gaara her arm, and with Hitomi's help, they darted forward through space until they arrived at the lip of the canyon. They looked down into it cautiously together, eyes searching for sight of the fallen Akatsuki shinobi. 

"No," Sakura says, lowering her voice. "What should I be hearing?"

Gaara folds his arms across his chest, eyes shut as he does. Sakura keeps quiet, trying valiantly to ignore the tug on her reserves that having Hitomi and Fudo still on her shoulders necessitated. It would be foolish to use one of her Byakugō to solve a mistake as small as her own chakra exhaustion, and a dangerous one at that.

For all her axe kick in that fight would have made her shishou proud, wasting chakra she had stored for years on something that could be solved with a large meal and a good night's sleep would probably make Tsunade reach through space-time herself to smack Sakura on the back of the head. 

 "Water," Gaara replies after a moment of quiet. "There's water in the base of the canyon."

She blinks in surprise, and looks over the edge downward. She can't see it, and she can't really hear it either, and she's pretty well surprised that Gaara apparently has ears like an Inuzuka or a Hatake. 

"Huh," she murmurs. "Guess the dry season will be a little easier from now on then, won't it?" 

The Kazekage nods. 

"I'll have surveyors come out immediately, to be sure that the water is safe to drink, considering the circumstances."

That makes a smile crack over Sakura's mouth. A shrill cry from overhead makes both shinobi turn their faces upwards. Sakura recognizes Hiroshiki circling ahead, and she lifts her arm for the falcon to come and perch on. 

He refuses, instead screeching once more before darting back towards the village. Sakura's stomach drops. 

"We ought to head back."

Sakura looks at Gaara, nodding firmly as she does. She offers him her arm to use Hitomi's aid to get them back to Suna, but Gaara shakes his head. 

"Allow me."

Sand pours back into Gaara's gourd, and a flat disc wide enough for both of them to stand on slowly gathers beneath their feet. 

"Dismiss your summons," he says, eyes ahead as they lift off the ground and head to the village. "I can take care of things from here."

"Oh," she says. "Thank you."

She looks down to Hitomi and Fudo, and gives each slug an affectionate pat on its back. 

 _'Good job, Sakura-chan,'_ Hitomi says. 

 _'One down, two to go!'_ Fudo cheers. 

She dismisses them with a smile, and Gaara guides them back to the village, following Hiroshiki as he screeches across the night sky. When the falcon leads them to the hospital, Sakura's stomach falls. 

They touch down on the roof as Hiroshiki swoops down and lands on Gaara's shoulder. Sakura nearly runs of the disc, darting towards him to assess the situation. He looks well enough, not especially worse for wear. It's clear he's favoring his right leg over his left, and there's a gash on his side that's been patched up nicely, but is in clear danger of bleeding through its binding. 

"What happened?" she asks, reaching out as she summons the Mystic Palm. 

Neji catches her wrist and shakes his head. 

"I'm fine," he replies. "Kankurō-san and I engaged with Akasuna no Sasori. We won; the body has already been retrieved by Suna ANBU." 

The name means nothing to Sakura, but she can see Gaara tense, and briskly walk to the stairwell that will lead him down into the hospital. 

"Then what happened to Kankurō?" she asks, following as Neji turns to tail Gaara. 

"He's been poisoned," he says. "The Suna elders haven't seen anything like it." 

They head down the stairs, moving after Gaara, who has taken up a rapid gait in order to get to his brother. 

"Did you get any clues about it from combat?" she asks. 

"Sasori only said he had three days to live."

Sakura sucks her teeth. 

"There are worse odds," she says below her breath. 

Neji jostles her shoulder with his, and together, they turn a corner and head into Kankurō's room. 

There are two healers already on him, and a third injecting what Sakura can guess is a general antidote. Gaara stands strong, but his eyes are frightened. Sakura can remember a time when Gaara was the scariest thing she had ever seen in her life; it's odd to see him acting afraid. 

Kankurō is grunting, clawing at his throat, convulsing in a way that makes Sakura narrow her eyes. The medics at hand are doing their best to restrain him, but it's clear that they're out of their depth. 

"I'm a Fire Country medic," she announces, rolling up her haori's sleeves. She walks briskly to a nearby sink and washes her hands with brusque efficiency. "I trained under the Godaime Hokage, Senju Tsunade. I'd like to offer my assistance."

They look to her, then to Neji and his hitai-ate to corroborate her story. Then, they look to their Kazekage. 

"Sakura-san is an ally," he says. "If she can help you, allow her to do so."

The medics nod, and beckon her closer. Sakura moves to the table. She holds her ear down to Kankurō's chest to hear his heart, and she focuses a small amount of chakra to the shell of her ear to magnify the other churning systems of his body. 

She focuses like she did in Shikkotsu, and she can hear his hormones, his blood cells, his neurons firing. Every system in his body is desperate for relief against the toxin infecting him. 

 _'Heavy metal toxin,'_ she thinks, lifting her head from his chest.  _'It's attacking the heart first.'_

"Scalpel."

Her voice comes out harder than she intends it to, but it takes barely a second for the instrument to be placed in her hand. She cuts open the binding on Kankurō's chest, and peels back the binding so she can get a look at the entry wound itself. 

It's blackened, the skin around it puckered, and leaking sluggish white discharge.

"Hold him down," she says, and the Suna medics attend her.

Sakura returns the scalpel to a nearby table, and with two fingers coated in healing green chakra, she pierces the wound. Kankurō roars, and with her extra hand, Sakura helps the other medics keep him down. She digs her fingers further into the wound even as her patient spasms, shouting in his agony. 

For Sakura, the world becomes silent. Her chakra is within Kankurō's body, the same way it is whenever she is healing another person, and how she can feel him the same way she feels herself. She finds the poison, where it has congregated around his heart, around his kidneys, and where it has begun to attack his stomach and his liver. 

She remembers Shigeo in Shikkotsu. She reminds herself that the body wants to heal. Kankurō was in pain and he was frightened, but his body wanted to heal. If Sakura trusted his body to do the work, Kankurō would trust Sakura in turn, and he would get better. 

She focuses on his blood, coursing through his veins, carrying the poison as a messenger back and forth. She focuses on the poison, shutting her eyes as she does so. She familiarizes herself with its weight, its constitution, how it differs radically from every naturally occurring substance in Kankurō's body. 

And then, she pulls it out. 

She hooks her fingers in the wound, manipulating the toxin into following her lead with her chakra. As she removes her fingers from Kankurō's entry wound, the black poison follows, surrounded by a long, thin tube of Mystic Palm healing chakra. 

"I need a bucket," she says, eyes narrowed. 

Kankurō has stilled, so one of the two medics retrieves one for her. She drags the poison from his body, and drops it, all of it, into the container the medic at her elbow is holding. 

"We'll need to cover that back up," Sakura says, wiping at her forehead with the back of her hand. "And make an antidote from what was extracted. But he'll make it."

A wave of dizziness comes over her, and she widens her stance to steady herself. 

"He'll live?" Gaara asks, damn near materializing at Sakura's side, he gets there so quickly. 

She nods. 

"He'll live," she replies. "In the meantime…"

He turns to her, bright teal eyes curious. 

"I have a lot to tell you."

* * *

"There are three jinchuuriki in Sunagakure?!"

Of all the places she thought she'd be able to have this conversation, in the sitting room with the elders of Sunagakure is the last place she actually wanted to have it.

Suna's elders are grumpier, coarser, and even more hawkish than the ones from Konoha, which is really saying something. The oldest woman, Chiyo, sneered as soon as she discovered Sakura was Tsunade's disciple. Her brother Ebizō is cut from the same snooty cloth, but he at least has the decency to be quiet and disapproving instead of loud and disapproving.

A final woman called Ikuko is severe, and the outburst about the other jinchuuriki present in Suna comes from an incredulous man named Kentaro.

"I can agree without their consideration to provide you and Hyūga-san amnesty for your help in defeating the Akatsuki members, and for saving Kankurō's life," Gaara had said, taking surprisingly warmly to the whole, 'We're sort of related' conversation. "I can offer the other jinchuuriki amnesty as well, but that will have to be fielded by my elder's council."

"I expected as much," Neji had said, rubbing his chin with his thumb and his forefinger.

"For continued amnesty, we'll need a majority vote," Gaara explained. "But Temari left the village as soon as the Akatsuki members attacked to get reinforcements from Konoha, and Kankurō is ill."

"Which  means the elders have the majority," Neji finished.

Sakura groaned; what an absolute headache that was going to be. And what a headache it was.

"The other jinchuuriki are not  threat to the continued safety of Sunagakure," she presses.

Neji stands just behind her, completely taking on the persona of bodyguard. He hasn't said a word since they entered the negotiating room, and he's kept his hands lax at his sides even as Sakura has gotten more and more riled up.

"There'll be targets on our backs," Ikuko grumbles. "More trouble than it's worth!"

"Your Kazekage is a jinchuuriki," Sakura counters, eyes narrowed. "There is already a target on Sunagakure's back, and on the back of every village currently harboring a vessel for the bijuu."

"I suppose it's rather easy for you to sound so cavalier," Kentaro sneers, looking down his nose at her. "Coming from a village twice the size of Sunagakure, with the most powerful bijuu of the bunch."

"You say that as if Suna originally refused having a bijuu in the first place," she snaps.

That shuts up both of those two elders, and it makes the other two narrow their eyes.

"What do you know of our history?" Chiyo spits. "Did they write that down in Konoha's history books? The deliberate maligning of other nations, and the appeasement that was the distribution of the demons chakra?"

Sakura bites her tongue, and finds that she really can't. 

"They are bijuu," she says. "Not demons. And Sunagakure wanted economic stability instead of a bijuu. Because your Shodaime wanted to create a groundwork for a village that would sustain it for the future. What has having a bijuu trapped in child after child done except nearly kill your citizens?"

"Oh!" Chiyo crows. "So now you're concerned with the deaths of Suna citizens? Why should a Konoha shinobi care what happens to the people of a village that has betrayed them once in the past?"

"Obaa-sama - ,"

"I am not a Konoha shinobi," Sakura snaps. "I wear no hitai-ate. I claim Shikkotsu Forest, and I represent no one other than myself. I am their emissary, and I am doing their work."

That sets the Sunagakure elders muttering to each other, but Chiyo doesn't look away from Sakura.

"So you're a rogue shinobi demanding that Sunagakure harbor weapons of mass destruction."

She offers Chiyo a grim smile.

"And a lot more, if you'd let me finish."

"What more could you possibly ask of us?" Kentaro balks.

Sakura levels him with her most neutral glare.

"For the benefit of the entire shinobi world, Shikkotsu requests that the Ichibi be extracted from the Kazekage."

The elders are shouting immediately after that.  

"Why on earth would we ever agree to such terms?"

"What could you possibly have to offer to Sunagakure?"

"Who gives you the right to demand a thing of us?"

"Honored elders," Gaara says, his voice cutting through the din.

The elders quiet down some, respecting his authority, but their gazes are shifty and obviously untrusting.

"Sakura-san speaks the truth. The Shodaime Kazekage preferred economic stability; land, food, access to resources. He wanted these things as opposed to a bijuu. My grandfather Reto recognized that the desert shinobi needed more than just power to sustain themselves in a climate as unforgiving as ours, against opponents as various as they had."

Sakura leans back into the soft red couch, and watches him speak. 

 _'Is this what Naruto will become?'_ she thinks.  _'When he takes the hat, will he hold a room the way Gaara does?'_

He has his fingers steepled beneath his chin, and he looks out over the room with slow blue-green eyes. 

"The Ichibi's power has done nothing except bring death and destruction to Sunagakure since it was given to us by the Shodaime Hokage," he says. "Without its influence, threats on the village, on my life, and on my brother's life, never would have occurred."

"The jinchuuriki have never worked as a deterrent of war," Gaara presses. "The hunger for power has insisted across generations that what we have is not enough."

"Our spies in the far north have reported an Akatsuki attack on Kumogakure's jinchuuriki," he continues. "And we know that Uzumaki Naruto was expelled from his village for several years to keep his location difficult to trace." 

"Deflecting this first attack occurred because we had help, something that I know all of you despise. But without that help, my brother would likely be dead, and the Ichibi would be in the hands of a terrorist organization. And there is nothing to stop Akatsuki from coming to Suna again, and again, until they achieve their ultimate goal."

"Sheltering the other jinchuuriki will be a strange way to keep Akatsuki from attacking us again," Chiyo bites. 

"Yes," Gaara agrees. "But three jinchuuriki against two of them are better odds than we had earlier this evening."

"Where?"

They turn their glances as one to Ebizō, who had been almost entirely silent up until that point. 

"Where exactly do you intend to place the Ichibi, should it be extracted from the Kazekage?"

Sakura doesn't even have to think about it. The answer comes to her lips before the thought can form. 

"To the safest place where a bijuu could reside," she replies. "The place they were born."

"And how do you suppose the Kazekage will survive the extraction?" 

Sakura lifts her chin.

"I can heal him."

He lifts an eyebrow. 

"You can?" 

"I've done it before."

Ebizō leans back in his seat, considering. 

"Have you now?"

"I say," Ikuko says, voice haughty and superior, "that we put it to a vote. All in favor of unleashing the Ichibi and destroying Suna's reputation, while also allowing fugitive jinchuuriki bait all of Akatsuki into penetrating our defenses  _once again - ,"_

The door slams open in the most unceremonious possible way. Neji is already moving for a defensive position, placing himself between Sakura and the door. The elders are spry for their age; each of them settles into attack positions. Gaara is the only one, Sakura notices, that does not move as the door opens. 

Standing beneath the arch is Temari, holding up a clearly exhausted Kankurō. 

"Votes cannot take place without the Kazekage's council present, Ikuko-san," the blonde says, with a smile sharp enough to cut. 

"Your brother has sustained a near fatal injury!" Kentaro splutters. 

"Sick or well," Kankurō grunts, not even trying to stand on his own two feet, "alive or dying, we're still direct descendants of the Shodaime. And we get a vote."

"As Gaara's siblings, and as his councilors," Temari adds, helping her brother into the room. 

Neji is polite enough to close the door behind them, and Sakura moves over on the red couch as Temari approaches to help her brother sit. The entire mood in the room shifts, and Sakura can feel it. With Temari and Kankurō backing him, Gaara might not have a majority vote, but he does have a measure more power than he had earlier. 

And with Ikuko trying to force a vote without all three Sand Siblings present, it's clear her own credibility has taken a hit, especially with foreigners in the room. 

"Well, Ikuko-san?" Temari asks, lifting an eyebrow and crossing one leg over the other. "Would you still like to put it to a vote?"

The woman mutters something under her breath about 'impertinence' and 'little brat' before she puffs herself up, and sits at her full height. 

"By show of hands," she says, eyes narrowed. "All in favor of extracting the Ichibi from the Kazekage and providing shelter to the - unexpected guests we have in Sunagakure?"

Gaara's hand rises. Temari's and Kankurō's do as well. 

"You'll vote for such a thing?" Kentaro asks. "Uninformed as you are?" 

Kankurō shrugs.

"We trust Gaara's judgment," Temari replies.

Sakura nearly snorts at that; she doesn't doubt it, but she knows that the debrief that will occur after that will be one for the ages. 

"It doesn't matter anyway," Ikuko says, folding her arms across her chest. "Three of you are in favor, and there are four that still haven't voted."

Ebizō clears his throat, and everyone in the room turns to look at him. His hand is raised.

"You'll find you'll see more when you use your eyes, Ikuko," he says. "I am in favor."

Temari looks surprised at that, but Kankurō chuckles. Ikuko looks like she's about to pop a blood vessel. 

"Ebizō - ,"

"Ah, Ikuko," he says. "You have to ask who is opposed."

"By show of hands, all opposed!" she snaps, raising her own hand. 

Kentaro follows suit, but Chiyo does nothing. 

"I abstain," the crabby woman grumbles, eyeing Ebizō.

Sakura lifts an eyebrow; it's clear there's going to be a conversation about that later. 

"It's settled," Gaara says. "The fuinjutsu specialists will be summoned. The Ichibi will be extracted at dawn, and resealed into the kettle. Sakura-san will transport it to the place of its birth, and we will offer her and the other jinchuuriki amnesty for the time being."

"Disgraceful," Kentaro grumbles, helping Ikuko to stand. 

"Konoha shinobi are infecting us with their softness," Ikuko says, loud enough to be heard by both Konoha born shinobi present. 

Chiyo bustles out of the room, but she eyes Sakura the whole way she goes. Ebizō follows her out, and shuts the door politely behind him. As soon as the door is closed and Sakura can't hear footsteps, she rounds on Kankurō. 

"What the  _hell_ are you doing out of bed?"

* * *

One thing that Sakura did not anticipate about the Ichibi being extracted at dawn, was the fact that dawn was only a short three and a half hours away. It's enough time to take a quick nap and have a light meal, and to assess the state of her reserves.

They aren't as full as they ought to be for the healing she's about to undertake, but she consoles herself that it will take up senjutsu chakra, and there is still enough left in her seal to heal Gaara several times over.

Neji sticks close to her side and puts up very chivalrously with her fussing. She doesn't particularly trust the Suna medics; after healing Kankurō, she finds their training to be sorely lacking in several places. Neji gives her a little smile and tells her that not everyone can be Senju Tsunade's apprentice. Sakura's cheeks go rosy, and she laughs as she nibbles on her last bite of falafel. 

She is summoned twenty minutes before dawn in one direction, and a Suna runner comes to retrieve Neji. 

"Temari-san brought back a team of Konoha shinobi," the girl explains. "They're requesting a debrief, and Sakura-san is needed at the extraction." 

Sakura purses her lips, stomach feeling frightened and floaty at the thought of more Konoha shinobi showing up and possibly sticking their feet in everything she's tried to accomplish in the past two days. 

Neji squeezes her arm lightly. Something in her aches for a kiss on the forehead, or at least his thumb; she knows she had a moment of tenderness back in Hot Springs, but she wants more. Neji nods at her and leaves with the runner. 

Sakura sucks in a breath and tampers down on her own disappointment, and heads off to the basement of the Kazekage residence. 

There are two shinobi, clad all in white guarding the door at the base of the stairs. Their faces are painted strangely, with sharp black lines, and their eyes are lined with kohl. They're priests of some kind, but Sakura can't tell of what order. 

Their face paint almost makes them look like tanukis. Her eyes widen in surprise, but before she can say anything, they open the door and usher her inside. 

The room within is filled with a dark purple light. There are torches on the wall, and strange seals, Sunagakure fuinjutsu curling along the ceiling, down to the walls, and onto the floor. At the center of the matrix are two massive circles; at the center of one is Gaara, at the center of the other is a tea kettle. 

"Sakura-san."

A man clad in white approaches her, his face painted in a similar way as the priests outside the doors. 

"My name is Sanpuku," he says, his voice soft and kind. "I am a priest of the desert spirits. And you are of Shikkotsu?" 

"I am," she says, nodding. 

Sanpuku turns and beckons her to follow. 

"The procedure is dangerous," he says, "though not impossible. You'll need to remain relatively close to Gaara-sama to heal him once the transfer is complete."

"Of course."

"Are you prepared?" he asks, hands tucked away in his white sleeves. "I was told you had done this before."

"I have once," she replies. "The circumstances were much different."

She had Katsuyu's help for one, which made it much easier to handle. She's healed Yugito since then, and Sakura isn't completely willing to drag Katsuyu into the human world. She's done an awful lot of summoning in the past few days, and a larger one like Katsuyu would probably put her own her ass, despite the chakra she's managed to replenish. 

"Be careful," Sanpuku advises. "Don't overexert yourself."

Sakura grins up at him. 

"Thank you, Sanpuku-san. I appreciate your concern," she says, nodding politely. "When will we begin?" 

"Immediately," Sanpuku says. "When the sun breaks over the horizon, we will commence."

He leaves her beside Gaara, and Sakura drops to her knees. She must look a sight. She hasn't changed her clothes since she fought in Kirigakure, and her new haori is going to smell in the morning if she doesn't wash it well this evening. 

Gaara is laid on the ground, shirtless. The seal on his stomach is large, sprawling up over his chest instead of being centered around his bellybutton. She tries her best not to stare; she's never seen a jinchuuriki's seal before and curiosity is threatening to overtake her. 

His eyes land on her and Sakura startles somewhat. He cracks a small half smile. 

"Are you nervous?" 

She lets out a shaky laugh. 

"A little. Are you?" 

He cuts his gaze to the ceiling, looking up at the matrix that has been painstakingly painted there. 

"A little."

She fiddles with the fabric of her pants to have something to do, chewing a little on her lower lip. 

"You have a question."

He isn't looking at her, but she looks at him. 

"You're very perceptive, Kazekage-sama."

"Thank you."

It makes her quirk a smile. 

"I do have a question," she says, smoothing out the bunched fabric beneath her fingers.

"Do ask."

"The meeting with your elders," Sakura begins. "It went much easier than I expected it to."

Gaara nods. 

"I agree."

"It surprised you?"

"Yes," he says. "I was not expecting support from any of my elders. I had already planned to give you my support when you explained to me the cost of storing the bijuu in human containers."

"You had?"

He looks at her again, and his eyes are neutral as they always are. But there is something in them, something that Sakura recognizes as a deep grief. 

"I did not ever ask to be the jinchuuriki for the Ichibi, Sakura-san," he says. "Even though I have learned to work with him over the years, I do not enjoy our situation. I have always known that if there were a chance wherein I could have him safely removed from me, then I would take it."

Sakura snorts. 

"I'm happy to help," she replies. "But it's still a lot to ask of you, and of your village."

"Suna was strong before the bijuu, and it will remain strong after," he counters. "I do not want the burden of sealing the Ichibi into my sister's children, or into my brother's, or mine."

"And the amnesty for the other jinchuuriki?"

"A small price to pay," he says. "You say the others are willing to have their bijuu extracted as well, but the priests will need time to adapt the seals to withstand the strength of beasts with extra tails. They have only ever needed to accommodate for the Ichibi."

"And your elders?"

Gaara huffs out a sigh at that, and it startles a laugh out of Sakura as well. 

"Ebizō-ojii-sama has his reasons though I don't know what they are," he says. "He is quieter than his sister. But they usually vote the same way, so it's likely Chiyo-obaa-sama will join him on our side before long."

She nods and looks up to where Sanpuku has settled down between the kettle and Gaara. 

"It's time to begin," he says. 

Sakura reaches down and lays her hand on Gaara's shoulder. 

"I'll be with you the whole way," she says encouragingly. 

Gaara reaches up and puts his hand on top of hers. 

"You helped me in battle, and you saved my brother's life," he replies. "I trust you with my own."

Surprise makes her throat close up but she doesn't have time to thank him for his faith in her. The priests begin a soft chanting, and the seals on the walls, citing, and floor begin to glow. 

The chakra that fills the room is lighter than Sakura expects it to be. It isn't oppressive or dark, even when the seal on Gaara's stomach begins to slowly fade from his skin. It's nothing like Gaara's chakra when they were twelve. It's strong, yes, but it's almost kinder somehow. 

Sakura watches as the ink from Gaara's seal fades, then slowly turns to sand on top of his skin. Sanpuku's chanting becomes slightly louder, and he forms hand seals that Sakura doesn't even remotely recognize. 

The sand from the seal on Gaara's chest lifts into the air, and Gaara grunts. She looks down at him, gathering healing chakra to her hands to ease some of the pain. The sand of his seal continues to rise, and floats over to the teakettle, slipping into the spout. 

She looks down at Gaara, tracking his heart rate and his respiration. He's stable, which puts her mind at ease. 

It goes on like that for some time, slowly. She's never heard of an extraction going as smoothly as this one does. It takes a long time, that's true enough. Sakura's internal clock tells her that at least three hours have passed. 

She really hardly has to do any healing. She unfurls her senjutsu Byakugõ and lets it fuel her technique. It concerns her a bit, because she's positive it should be more  _painful._ But it isn't. And she isn't sure if it's because she's there, healing the slight traumas as Sanpuku inflicts them, or if it's because the extraction isn't happening abruptly or forcibly. But it's softer. Easier than anticipated.

Once morning becomes noontime, the last of Shukaku's chakra comes out of Gaara's body and disappears into the teakettle. 

The chakra in the seals on the walls slowly disappears. The room is dark. Sakura takes in a deep breath and runs a diagnostic over Gaara. She's been slowly healing the damage as it was inflicted, and he hasn't dipped below stable at all in the last several hours.  

"Sakura-san."

She looks up from her charge and Sanpuku nods towards the kettle. 

"If Gaara-sama is stable, then we can leave him in the hands of our medics," he says. "It's time to return Shukaku-sama to his homeland."

The door behind them opens, and two medics enter with a gurney. She steps back to let them escort the Kazekage out of the room. Sakura stands, watching them go, then crosses the room. 

She crouches down and wraps her fingers around the handle of the kettle. She bites the thumb of her left hand, and as her blood slips down her wrist, she thinks of the smell of wet grass. Of sunrise. Of blindness, and of sight. She thinks of Shikkotsu, and then she is gone.

* * *

The world is brighter. More vivid. More brilliant. She wonders how she's gone all this time living in the human world, how she ever managed to make herself come back from  _this_. 

Shikkotsu is just as she remembered it. The sun is bright, and the trees are bending gently in the breeze. But the slugs aren't sleeping. In fact, they've congregated, all of them, to meet Sakura. 

She is standing in the valley, in the field where Onyomi gave her the gifts she was to use to help heal the world. In her hand is Onyomi's brother. The thousand slugs of Shikkotsu murmur greetings to her, and Sakura replies in kind until Katsuyu and their siblings arrive, their parent just in front of them. 

Sakura bows deeply, humbled again at the sight of the massive slug. She feels insignificant before him, but also comforted. 

"Rise, child," he says, his voice a soothing rumble. "Now is no time for stiffness or pleasantries."

Sakura rises, a hesitant smile curling over her face. 

"Now is a time for celebration."

She won. 

She finally,  _finally_ won. Kiri had been a disaster, and though she had more of her men alive than dead, it had been an awful blow to her pride and to her heart. But she had managed to help Gaara defend himself and his village, and Shukaku had been safely extracted without Gaara's life being forfeit. 

And now here she was, standing in the forest, reuniting Onyomi with one of his siblings. 

"Sakura-chan!" Sango bellows, scooching rapidly towards her. "Put my cranky uncle down! I'll release him from the teapot!"

She smiles down at the bright pink slug, and gently settles the teakettle down as instructed. Sango slithers onto it, and doubles, then triples in size, using her slime to unlock the seals trapping Shukaku within. 

Just as the sand went in, it slowly eases out as Sango works. In no time, there is a great beam of bright yellow light, so bright it makes Sakura shield her eyes. The smell of the desert fills her nose; all spices and sweet things. It's at odds with the soothing green-and-peach-and-wet smell of Shikkotsu, but they don't compete. They complement one another. 

Sakura breathes deeply and lowers her arm. 

Towering above her, standing at the same level as pale Onyomi is the massive tanuki that terrified her in her childhood. Shukaku is as large as she remembers him, but instead of looking bloodthirsty and enraged, instead he is calm. Surprised. 

"Otouto," Onyomi breathes, inching towards his younger brother. 

"Don't call me that, you big crybaby," Shukaku grumbles. "Where the hell are we?" 

"The forest, little brother," Onyomi says, turning his head this way and that to show him. "Where we were born. The place we left so long ago."

Shukaku looks around almost hesitantly. He looks down at the masses of slugs surrounding them, eyes catching for a moment on Sakura before he looks back at Onyomi. 

"These all your kids?" 

Onyomi lets out a laugh at that, but nods. 

"They are, all of them."

"And the human?" 

"Sakura-chan is one of mine as well."

Shukaku nods, resting back on his massive haunches. 

"It's safe here, Shukaku-jii-sama," Mitsuru says from beside his father. "The only people with access to Shikkotsu are slug summoners, and even they can be denied access." 

Shukaku huffs at that, but does reach up to scratch the back of his head. 

"Shikkotsu, huh?" he grumbles. "It's been a while. Those big ol' pomegranates still grow here? Like they did when we were young?" 

Sakura is pretty sure Onyomi is going to burst. The slug sidles up around his younger sibling, happy bubbles rolling off of him in waves. 

"I'll take you to them, otouto."

"Don't bother," Shukaku snaps. "I remember the way. And _don't_ call me that!" 

"But you always did used to get lost…"

"I never got lost! That brat Kurama, he would give me bad directions!"

"It's rather childish to blame everything on your siblings, otouto."

"I'll place blame where blame is due!"

Sakura watches them bicker, then looks up at the sky. It's full of bubbles, and light catches them, and bounces off of them. The air is sweet as peaches. She doesn't want to leave. 

"Sakura."

She looks down to where Nao has approached her. The slug is smaller, standing at a height with Sakura. She gets closer, leaning down, and presses their foreheads together, Nao's white diamond against Sakura's four seals. 

"You did good."

Sakura's breath hitches in her throat. Praise from Nao was rare as praise from Tsunade. She brings her fist up to her mouth, biting down on her scarred knuckles to keep herself from sobbing. The tears come, and she isn't ashamed of them when they do. 

"You lost some, but you snatched some right back."

She swallows hard and nods, rubbing furiously at the corners of her eyes where the tears fall. Nao pulls back and Sakura follows suit, and stares up at the slug with a watery smile. 

"I like your little jacket," she says with good humor. 

Sakura laughs at that, and it sounds sad even though she's overjoyed. It's a bittersweet happiness, one only savored because she lost so much before she finally turned the tables. 

Nao bobs her head at Sakura, and Sakura takes another step back. Time to go back. She takes in a shuddery breath, and looks out at the thousand assembled slugs of Shikkotsu. The older ones, ones who knew stories of Shukaku from his youth with the other bijuu, they are darting after Onyomi and his brother, while the younger ones dilly dally, fine to wait their turn to meet their bad tempered uncle.

"Rest easy tonight," Nao says. "And give them hell in the morning."

Sakura clicks her heels together, and salutes the strongest of her summons. 

"Yes, ma'am."

Nao sends her back with a flare of her chakra and a bob of her head. Sakura returns to Suna in a flurry of soft purple bubbles. When she falls, chakra exhaustion finally dropkicking her like it was bound to do, the bubbles break her fall. 

She rests easy, and sleeps through the rest of the day. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hooray for 11k! 
> 
> thank you for reading, and thank you for patiently waiting for this next chapter!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was Yugito, a hopeful worst case scenario. But now there was Gaara, the culmination in what was probably a lifetime of helpless dreaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for your patience!

Naruto is pretty sure his heart is going to thunder straight through his sternum, fight its way out of his skin, and land at his feet. He's going to have to leave it somewhere in Fire Country, but it'd probably keep thudding, keep thumping, chase after him as he chases after Sakura.

He's terrified. He's  _terrified_. He had thought - What had he thought? That he was safe? That Gaara was safe? 

Naruto was no fool. He understood what he was, and what that meant to some people. He knew of Akatsuki, can remember in stark clarity his almost-kidnapping so many years ago, how Sasuke had tried to - 

He knew on a basic level, that his long term training mission with Jiraiya wasn't solely so he could learn a couple new jutsu and upgrade his jacket. It was harder to stick an arrow in a moving target. And Jiraiya was a sage. He was one of the Sannin! He had kept Naruto safe before, of course he could do it again. 

But Gaara didn't have a sage. He had his siblings, yeah, and Temari was terrifying. But she had nothing on Jiraiya, had nothing on Tsunade. Plus, Gaara was the Kazekage. That was just another target on his back. 

His throat is dry with the fear rising in his stomach, and he can feel, absently, the skin around his fingers beginning to grow tight. Fear was a trigger; fear of the unknown, for the lives of the people he loved. But he didn't have time for that damned fox to rile him up, to try to take over his body like it had only a handful of times before, and only when Naruto had needed it the most. 

 _'Calm down,'_ snaps a low rumbling voice in the cavern of his mind,  _'you're going to hurt yourself.'_

Naruto stumbles, leans hard against the trunk of the tree he's been vaulting himself off of. He gets a sideways glance from Kakashi, and Lee calls out behind him to see if he's alright. Naruto waves his hand and starts running again. 

The fox doesn't speak to him often. Usually, only when Naruto needs its power, or when it feels like taunting him. 

_'Nothing bad happened.'_

Naruto grits his teeth. 

_'How would you know?'_

It's even rarer that Naruto talks back. It must come as a surprise to the fox, because it doesn't respond for a few moments. 

Then, something strange happens. It's like - like a bleed. Naruto can feel, absently, like he's touching something through water, a moment of hesitation. Fear that isn't his own. The roiling feeling in the pit of your stomach when you're debating whether or not to tell the truth. 

Feelings. Other than rage and contempt and bloodlust. They aren't his own. Naruto's eyes widen; they're coming from the fox. 

_'You - , '_

The seal on his stomach hums with an insistent, dull burn, one that makes Naruto rest his hand on it in case it gets worse.

 _'I just know,'_ the fox grumbles.

His seal rarely burns. Only when he's using the fox's power, and sometimes when the beast is angry with him. Now that he's thinking about it, Naruto's pretty sure the burn had woken him up a few weeks back. That morning it was so intense it dragged him out of sleeping, and then he noticed that Jiraiya was missing and - 

Realization dawns, and Naruto feels the fox, begrudgingly impressed as Naruto puts the pieces together. 

The fox had woken him up. But how much had it known? Did it know Jiraiya had left, even though Naruto himself hadn't? Did it know that Sakura was out traveling, and that Neji was with her? 

And how did it know about Gaara now?

 _'Tell me,'_ he demands, fingers digging into the cloth of his jacket.  _'Tell me how you know.'_

The fox scoffs, and some of its annoyance flickers against Naruto's mind. He ignores it, running forward, because now he has to know. 

_'Is it because Gaara's a jinchuuriki? Like I am? Is that how you know? You're in his mind, too?'_

There's a bit of hesitation as Naruto asks his questions, and for a moment, he's worried the fox won't answer them. Then there's a huff of breath, and Naruto's lungs are filled with the smell of peaches and bubble soap. The smell is gone as soon as it arrives, and the fox's hesitation edges away. 

_'The bijuu that was in Gaara is my brother. He told me that Gaara's fine.'_

Was? Naruto's face pales, and he does his best not to stagger. 

 _'He's not dead, brat,'_ the fox snaps.  _'Stop jumping to conclusions.'_

Naruto sucks in a breath and does his best to steady himself. The bijuu could - could  _talk_ to each other. And they could tell each other things about their jinchuuriki. He spares only the briefest of moments to feel  _mortified_ about his eating habits, his masturbation habits, and, well,  _every_ aspect of Jiraiya's care for him. 

Then, he can only think of one thing: the Akatsuki had gone to attack Gaara, but Gaara had survived. His bijuu had been removed, but what was normally a death sentence, apparently didn't apply. 

It's been a long time since Naruto wanted the fox out of him. The demon gave him its strength when he needed it, sometimes called him a brat, and generally kept its ancient malice kept to itself unless something pissed it off. It'd been like having a very quiet roommate. 

Naruto tries to think about what life would be like without the fox in that corner of his mind, without its heat taking up space behind the seal on his stomach. And it's strange to realize, but he really can't imagine it. 

 _'I'm flattered,'_ the fox drawls. Naruto rubs at his cheeks where they begin to redden. He resolves to tell the others it's because he's been running too hard and not because the fox is feeling especially cheeky today. 

 _'Who healed him?'_ Naruto asks. 

There's that sliver of hesitance again, but there's no bubble-soap-and-peach smell to ward it off this time. Instead, there's the distinct feeling of a pair of shoulders being rolled back and some sharp persistence. 

 _'Friend of yours,'_ the fox says.  _'And a friend of mine.'_

Another jinchuuriki. But who? Naruto didn't know any jinchuuriki, and while he's good at making friends, he's pretty sure he would have noticed if one of them were also the vessel of a being made of pure chakra. 

Not to mention, he didn't know many healers. There was Tsunade and Shizune, but they were still in the village. Sakura had mentioned being Tsunade's teacher, and her contract with Tsunade's slug summons, but that didn't mean - 

Or, maybe it could. 

Naruto really couldn't see Sakura as a jinchuuriki. It wasn't like it was something that showed on your skin (except for dire circumstances of course), but she just didn't seem the type. There had been something different about the feel of her chakra the last time he had seen her, but he had chalked that up to her contract with Shikkotsu. Everyone with a summoning contract had a strange feel to their chakra, and that was because of their summon's chakra thrumming in their veins. 

It felt like a really dulled down version of being a jinchuuriki. 

Besides that, the fox - the fox couldn't have had any friends other than the bijuu. If the one inside of Gaara was its brother, that left seven to think of. If Sakura  _and_ one of the fox's friends had both told the fox that Gaara was fine, then that meant - 

 _'You're insufferable,'_ the fox grumbles.  _'I'm going to let you wait and let them deal with you.'_

Naruto ignores it. He's assaulted with a memory of the tanuki, half its massive sandy body taken over Gaara's. The awful, painful looking smile. The desperation in Gaara's bright teal eye, begging for help and demanding Naruto's blood in turn. 

Then Gaara's face is replaced with Sakura's, his teal eye for her green one, and Naruto runs harder. 

He hasn't wanted the fox out of him in ages, and he doesn't remember it being put in him in the first place. Still. Naruto knows the burden of a stranger's hate. He doesn't want that for Sakura. 

He runs harder, passing Kakashi-sensei in his mad dash for the border. He needed to be sure she was alright. That  _both_ of them were alright. 

* * *

Sakura wakes up in the bed Neji left her in, feeling more rested than she has in days. The dredges of chakra exhaustion still hang heavy around her, tugging sleepily at her limbs, but there's enough in her reserves that she feels a little closer to human. 

She gets to her feet, rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. She doesn't bother waiting to be stopped. She leaves her room, finds a stairwell, and gets herself up to the roof. 

It's late in the day, but the sun is hidden behind a smattering of fluffy clouds. It feels like rain. Sakura sucks in a breath of it. She opens up her tenketsu, and slowly, she begins to dance. 

It reminds her of Shikkotsu, the Dance of Earth and Sky. It steadies her. She doesn't have a lot of chakra in her reserves, but just going through the motions of forming her senjutsu chakra and storing it deep into her bones - it's enough. 

She stops when she's depleted her own chakra by half. She stands up to her full height, her face towards the sun. She focuses hard as she can, opens her mouth to taste the wind. She opens her tenketsu, opens her palms. 

Letting nature energy in, and letting it heal her has always been the most difficult to her. She had only been able to do it once in Shikkotsu, when she had broken her leg. Now, it's just as hard. 

She tries to let the nature energy pulling around her, tries to let it do what it wants. It wants to heal her wounds, sees the empty belly of her chakra within her, wants to fill her up. 

But it means a total loss of control. It means giving herself over to the natural world in a way that her shinobi instincts scream at her not to. It means trust. Sakura wants to trust the pulse of the world. She  _wants_ to. But the last time she had decided to trust something, to trust someone outside of herself, the last time she had decided to take a chance she had lost Yagura. 

She feels her bones start to go mushy, feels the familiar-foreign eyestalks begin to protrude from her forehead. Sakura sucks in a breath and then she gives. She pushes her own chakra out into the world because she had taken in so much of this desert energy, and slowly her body returns to normal. 

When she closes her tenketsu, her reserves are half filled with the nature energy of Suna. It's sharper than Shikkotsu's, all prickly pears and sand scrubbed skin and lemonade. It's invigorating how place can change the way the nature energy feels. The way it tastes, settled in your belly. 

When she turns her head, Utakata is there, an eyebrow lifted at her. She gives him a sort of half smile, but her expression breaks wide open when Neji comes up behind him. 

She darts forward, takes Neji by the forearm and tugs him in. She feels his hands come up onto her shoulders, holding her close. 

"You did it," he says. "The Kazekage woke up two hours before you did. He's fine. Like the Ichibi was never inside of him in the first place."

Sakura squeezes him harder, tries to memorize the way he feels. Sturdy. Present under her grasp. She pulls back and looks at him, at the little distance in between them, and she wants to lean forward to kiss him. And then Utakata gives a polite cough and Sakura turns red. 

"If you're finished mauling that poor boy, imouto," Utakata drawls, good humor in his gaze. "There's a war council on, and we need your expertise." 

Sakura nods brusquely. Utakata turns and leads the way back down off the roof and into the Kazekage tower. Sakura tries to retract herself from Neji, but he holds on just a second too long. He presses a kiss against the four diamonds on her forehead, and Sakura tugs him back in again. Holds on just a little bit longer. 

"How is he?" he asks. 

Sakura nods, smiling. 

"He's fine," she replies. "His big brother was glad to see him again."

Neji places one hand on top of her head and hums his approval. 

"Good," he replies. "They've all been twitchy since you left. Things have changed."

Sakura blinks up at him and Neji looks down at her. His hand comes down, his thumb pressing sweetly against her forehead the way she loves him to. 

"What do you mean?" 

Neji's eyebrow quirks up, then smooths into a look of affection. 

"You dance with your eyes closed," he says, realizing. "You haven't seen."

He steps away from her, gently turning her shoulders so she can see. 

Suna is different already. The sand that glitters all around them has a different luster. Instead of its pallid pale brown, it's now glittering and multicolored. The mountains themselves are striated, with sand that is deep red and purple and gold, even black or a sharp teal in some places. 

As if overnight, Sunagakure's sands and the deserts surrounding them, are a wash of color. It looks like Shikkotsu, if Shikkotsu were a desert. 

"Taking him back to his birthplace brought a little bit of balance back," she breathes. 

Neji nods behind her, his hands gentle on her shoulders. 

"The spring in the valley, it's water has medicinal qualities," he says. "Imagine what the world will look like when all of them are home."

Tears spring to Sakura's eyes. She's  _excited_. She wonders how Konoha will change when the Kyuubi, Kurama is returned home. How Kiri will change with Saiken joins with Onyomi again. She feels again the loss of Yagura, knowing full well that there will always be a little hole in both worlds where Isobu should fit.

Sakura beams, and carefully takes one of Neji's hands off her shoulder. 

"Let's go," she says. 

He nods and lets her lead him back down into the tower. 

The seals on the bottom of the jinchuuriki's feet tug Sakura towards them. She walks towards where she knows Utakata is, feeling her way towards the rest of them. There's a flare of something familiar, something that makes Sakura pause, but she ignores it. There were more pressing matters at hand. 

The jinchuuriki are assembled in a room clearly for foreign dignitaries. There's a plate of food that Rōshi is steadily making his way through, and Han has his arms folded across his chest in his usual way. Utakata smiles at her as she enters, and the other two look up. 

"Sakura," Han says, arms dropping as she enters. 

He stands and comes to meet her. He drops his hands on her shoulders, looking into her face to gauge her wellness. When he's satisfied, he smiles behind his mouth guard, crinkling the corners of his eyes. 

"You look well," he says. 

"Come here and eat," Rōshi barks. "You wore yourself out doing so much. You won't be of much use if you're falling on your feet."

Sakura rolls her eyes, but listens. She helps herself to the yakitori in front of her.

"As we were saying," Utakata says, crossing one leg on top of the other, chewing lightly on the mouth of his pipe. "We've got a good handle on every jinchuuriki except for Fū-san."

Han crosses his arms again and Rōshi uses one of the yakitori sticks to pick meat out of his teeth. 

"Chōmei is difficult to reach mentally," he says, voice gruff. His occasional glances at Sakura tell him he was worried over her. Softy. "Taki isn't known for treating their jinchuuriki very well."

Sakura purses her lips, chewing on the heavily spiced chicken. 

"We think the stress of her environment is occupying much of Fū-san's headspace, and as a result, Chōmei's as well," Utakata adds. 

It made sense. There was little space to think about escape when you were too busy worrying about your survival. It still makes Sakura tense. Naruto had suffered throughout his entire childhood because the village didn't understand what Kurama was. He had eventually found friends, had gotten himself some acclaim in the village through his work protecting it. But it had never been so bad that he considered deserting. 

But Utakata had. Han and Rōshi had. Sakura couldn't speak for Yugito or Bee, Gyūki's jinchuuriki. She could say less for Yagura and Isobu. 

But if Fū wanted out, but couldn't get out because she was more focused on living another day, there was nothing Sakura could do but help her. 

"She's still a jinchuuriki," Neji says, elbows on his knees. 

He really shouldn't have been in this little war council in the first place. Plausible deniability and all that. Sakura figures that's gone out of the window now that he's killed an Akatsuki member and turned a blind eye while Sakura went off to ferment revolution in Kiri. 

"Meaning," Han picks up, "that even if she is despised by her village, they'll still want to keep her inside of its walls."

Sakura grunts around her mouthful, tearing off another piece of chicken. 

"Contacting them through Chōmei-baa-sama seems like our only option," she mumbles through a full mouth; something the Sakura of her genin days would find deplorable. 

All the jinchuuriki in the room look at her, brows lifted at the way she addressed the Nanabi. Sakura shrugs; there were much stranger things about her than the way she called 'demons' her aunties. 

"Since," Utakata begins, drawing attention back to himself, "we are unofficially under Sunagakure's protection, I see no reason why we can't send a small squad to retrieve her. Or at least to warn her of the danger that she's in, and what her options are. Considering."

His voice trails off, but his gaze is heavy on Sakura. She swallows her mouthful and looks at all of them. 

A jinchuuriki had been split from their bijuu, and there had been no loss of life in the process. It was unheard of, pure and simple. 

Sakura is well aware of their want, the want of all six of them, the jinchuuriki and their bijuu. Despite their connections, their friendships, they were separate beings. They deserved their separate bodies, their separate minds. None of them had consented to being put together, and though they had grown fond of each other, all of them in some small way wanted to be apart again. 

Before Sakura can open her mouth again to answer their questions, there is a light knock at the door. They all turn to it, relaxing minutely when Gaara steps through. 

He looks good, a slight measure of color in his cheeks. He's walking unaided and he looks as though he's gotten a great deal of sleep. 

"Gaara," Sakura says, standing to greet him. 

He smiles at her, a small, hidden expression and steps forward, shutting the door behind him. 

"Are you well?" 

He nods, but doesn't move to get deeper into the room. 

"He told me, before he left," Gaara begins, "why it was working."

They all go still, hanging on Gaara's next word. 

"There is pain when a jinchuuriki and a bijuu are brought together, because rarely do they want to be brought together," he continues. "When they're taken apart, there is usually pain, even death, because the chakra coils are bound so tightly together."

Sakura nods. She had thought of as much herself when she was still healing Yugito. Her coils had been fried when Matatabi was yanked out of her. 

"But that is because there is fear," Gaara continues. "Bijuu are capable of it. They are scared of what is happening to them, the jinchuuriki feel that they are dying and are afraid of death." His gaze picks up, lands evenly on Sakura. "But neither of us were afraid. We both wanted the change to happen."

Consent. Trust. They had put themselves willingly into her hands. The body wanted itself to be healed of trauma, so lent itself towards healing. Gaara and Shukaku had wanted to be separated, and so lent themselves into Sakura's hands. 

Gaara had even said so before she had begun working; _"You helped me in battle, and you saved my brother's life. I trust you with my own."_

She had only had to heal minor traumas. The little pockets where Shukaku's chakra had been so deeply imbedded in Gaara's coils that there was minor scraping. Everything else had been easy. So easy it made Sakura nervous.

Yugito had been a husk when Sakura found her, but Gaara was still in fighting condition. But he chose to have Shukaku removed, and Shukaku chose to go. They gave so Sakura could take. They trusted her, and so no one had to die. 

"It will be difficult," Gaara says, addressing the room once more, "to move the other bijuu from you. The fuinjutsu our priests have was built to contain the Ichibi, so it will take time to build new ones that will accommodate the extra power."

"But if we want it?" Utakata asks. 

Gaara nods. 

"If Sakura-san is willing and able," he says, "then yes."

It's like a heavy weight lifts off of the room with the realization. The possibility was already there, teasing all of the bijuu and the jinchuuriki. There was Yugito, a hopeful worst case scenario. But now there was Gaara, the culmination in what was probably a lifetime of helpless dreaming. 

It strikes Sakura then that these men, even Utakata who calls her 'imouto' are so much older than her. Have lived the life of a shinobi, with twice the pain, twice the difficulty  _because_ of their jinchuuriki status. Of course their eyes are hungry, are gleaming, are a little wet with the possibility. Of course they want what she had managed to give Gaara. 

"But," Gaara says, "that is not why I came to see you."

Sakura lifts an eyebrow. 

"There are some people here," he continues, a wry look in his eye, "that would very much like to see you."

* * *

Kakashi expects Naruto to forget all sense of propriety when he sees Gaara. He doesn't expect Naruto's sudden hesitance when Sakura enters the room.

She looks a mess, that much is true. It's clear she's been dealing with chakra exhaustion, that she's been on the run. Her face is leaner, more of the baby fat gone than was there the last time Kakashi saw her. She's beginning to look more like a seasoned kunoichi, and less like a girl still in training. 

Naruto's hands twitch hesitantly at his sides when she enters the room. Tenten and Lee have no such compunctions. They're on Neji before he can even extricate himself from Sakura's side. Lee is sobbing, Gai is monolouging, and Tenten is talking a mile a minute. Their supplementary teammate Sai is silent, hanging at the back, smiling falsely. The boy reminds Kakashi very much of Yamato when his name was still Tenzou; it raises his hackles to smell ROOT on the shinobi.

Kakashi smiles behind his mask to ease some of the tension. It's been a long time since so many pieces of this incarnation of Team Seven were all in the same place. Naruto's hesitance towards Sakura, the way he refuses to get too close to her now that he's seen her after three years of absence is what makes Kakashi take the first step. 

"Moro is annoyed that you've been gone so long," he says, cocking his head at her. "He says you carve up a carcass better than I can."

It brings a laugh to Sakura's eyes, mentions of the ōkami, and it eases the stiffness she's carried since she entered the room. 

"The butcher carved up the carcasses," she says, throwing off the praise. She lifts an eyebrow at him though, her hands on her hips. "Though I'm surprised he's letting you call him so familiarly."

Kakashi shrugs. 

The ōkami had been stubborn with him, even after Sakura had dragged him out of the woods and into his grandmother's house. He had to relearn all of his family history, had to face his family's ghosts to protect the last piece he had of the Hatake. 

It had taken months. He had gotten to know the Nara better than he had expected to. Shikaku had hardly lifted his eyebrows when Kakashi started calling on the Nara for their choice venison. 

"Our friend knows your friend is hungry," Shikaku grumbled, rooting around in his fridge for the chilled meat. "She says take this with her blessing."

Kakashi nodded, then doubly applied himself to looking into the spiritual history of Konoha. He wasn't beyond making the Hatake the allies of the Nara, even though in the old days his clan had poached deer from the Nara lands. It had all been water under the bridge when Konohagakure was founded. The Nara herds fed the Hatake wolves, and the Hatake wolves protected the Nara lands. 

Much of that mutually beneficial relationship had petered out into nothing when Kakashi forgot the old ways, when he abandoned the Nara lands. 

Now it seemed Sakura, Itsukushima, and Kasuga all had a vested interest in the survival of the Hatake and their final living ōkami. Moro wasn't so proud he would refuse fresh meat.

It took a long time, a much longer time once Sakura left to get the name out of the spirit. He had only known Itsukushima and Kasuga's names because the ōkami had given them to him. 

Earning the ōkami's name had taken an unreasonably long time, in Kakashi's eyes. All of his ninken knew it, because the ōkami was more or less their grandfather. They wouldn't tell him either. Pakkun had been especially incendiary about it. 

It hadn't been until Kakashi had gone into the mountain ranges just jutting out of Hatake territory, had hunted and killed a mountain goat with his own hands that Moro had licked the side of Kakashi's head and told him his name. 

"Maa, Sakura-chan," Kakashi says, "you sound like you don't believe in me. I'm hurt."

"Stay hurt," Sakura quips, grinning. But her gaze turns a little respectful. It's strange how that bolsters Kakashi. It's been a minute since he had Sakura's respect. "But that's good. It means he trusts you. He's getting stronger."

Kakashi shrugs a shoulder, tries to stay nonchalant. 

"That's not the only thing."

Sakura's brow furrows. Kakashi puffs up his chest. 

"There are two pups," he declares behind his hand. "And one of the wolves that left when my father died, returned."

There was a small pack in the little mountain range. Moro, his two pups, and Ōkuri, who snuck into Kakashi's apartment and told him stories of his mother when his dreams forced him awake. 

Sakura's smile at the news is radiant. She claps her hands, jumps up and down twice before she takes Kakashi's one hand in hers. 

"You have to tell me  _everything_ ," she says. They're lucky that they only sound like wildlife enthusiasts. The Hatake lands were known for housing wild wolves. "The pups, and the older one. What do they look like? How old were the pups when you left?"

Kakashi lets her chatter his ear off, gives answers when she demands them. It's worth it to catch the way Naruto's stiffness bleeds into relief. Whatever he thought had happened to Sakura clearly wasn't as bad as he expected. 

There's a lull in the conversation that he carefully nurtures, until Sakura's gaze can't help but stop on Naruto, and Naruto's can't help but land on her. She smiles at him, looking as shy as she was when she looked at Sasuke as a genin. 

"Long time no see, huh?" Naruto asks. 

Sakura huffs out a laugh. But Naruto presses forward and wraps her up in a hug. Kakashi watches her bunch her fingers in the fabric of his orange jacket, and breathes easy again. 

Naruto wasn't Obito, and Sakura wasn't Rin. But it was - it was good to have these little pieces back where they were supposed to be. 

* * *

 "We've lost  _three_ members to  _Shikkotsu no Sakura's_ bullshit," he spits, black eye threatening to bleed red. 

Tailing Deidara and Sasori had been a repeat of Obito's regular duties. He and Zetsu were made for infiltration and for spying. He wasn't supposed to intervene unless absolutely necessary. He knew that Pein had few qualms about members of Akatsuki losing their lives. He only had his own goal in mind, and a little bit of blood loss wasn't of the upmost concern to him. 

Sasori had fallen to a Hyūga and the Kazekage's puppeteer brother. There had been little surprise there. The Hyūga's near perfect defense would have been solid against Sasori's massive attacks, and the puppeteer could fight Sasori on his own merit once the Hyūga had exhausted Sasori's weapon reserves. 

His body hadn't been recovered. The puppeteer had sealed it away and taken it back with him. Obito hadn't bothered giving chase to retrieve it. The only thing they'd get was Sasori's ring. He had nothing by way of important documents on him. 

Deidara's death had been  _aggravating_ to say the fucking least. He supposed that's what happened when you let some shinobi more obsessed with his aesthetic than the long term goals of an organization run amok. Still. 

His fingers, curled tight into his fist curl impossibly tighter. He's sure if his grip were any stronger, he'd pierce the gloves on his hands and draw blood from his palms. 

 _Still_. 

Kisame's defection on the other hand? Made Obito see  _red_. It was one thing to lose a comrade to death. That was the way of the shinobi, the way of every mercenary killer that lived and thrived in this world But defection? Betrayal? That made Obito want to set shit on  _fire_. 

"I'm aware," Pein says, his purple eyes flitting across the assembled members of Akatsuki. Kakuzu's own eyes were narrowed, probably tallying up the money that pink haired  _brat_ would be worth now that she had an Akatsuki life under her belt. Hidan looked like he was on the verge of picking his teeth with his scythe. 

Itachi was still as a seeing pool. Konan, the only woman among them, was tight lipped and silent. 

"That the remaining jinchuuriki, save for the Hachibi, Nanabi, and Kyuubi, are all within Suna's walls."

Obito wants to crack his knuckles against Pein's face. 

Itachi's face lifts and the sharp line of Konan's mouth goes a little sharper. 

"What?" Hidan drawls. "You want us to stage a fucking siege?" 

Pein's gaze lands on him for a moment before it moves to land on Konan. She doesn't so much as shift under the weight of his gaze. 

"Not a siege," Pein says. "I don't intend to starve them out."

Hidan's mouth curls back in that hideous grin of his, the one that he only gets on his face when he knows he'll be allowed to indiscriminately end people's lives. 

"An invasion, then," Kakuzu supplies. 

Pein nods. Obito sucks his teeth. 

Deidara had pulled him from the wreckage at Kannabi Bridge. Had been part of the brigade assigned to destroying what had already been destroyed, looting bodies for money and information. But Obito hadn't been dead. 

Iwa wasn't a picnic, especially not for a prisoner of war. But Deidara had visited him every day. Part of his torture, Obito knew then, in his rational mind. Having his so-called savior return to him every day with a meal would make him more likely to trust Deidara, especially when the other guards only broke his fingers, ripped out his toenails, and made thinly veiled threats about stealing his remaining Sharingan.

Against his better judgement, against his better  _training_ , Obito had fallen for it. For Deidara. With his wicked smiles and his insistence that art was a  _bang_. An  _explosion_. 

Maybe Deidara had fallen for his own ruse, too. Because when Akatsuki came for him, Deidara came for Obito. 

Uchiha Itachi had looked down on his malnourished older cousin, without even enough chakra to change his eyes and remind Itachi that they were blood. Obito had known better than to give away his position. The guards had taunted him about the Massacre. He wasn't going to reveal himself, make himself another name to add to Itachi's kill count. 

But he knew more about the Sharingan than Itachi could ever dream to. So he masked his talents in orange, said they were clan abilities and feigned not knowing his own name. 'Tobi' was the name he had given the Iwa shinobi. Even if they knew he was an Uchiha from his gouged out eye, they wouldn't know his true name. 

Ransoms didn't happen in war time. Especially not for a screw up like Obito. 

He had followed Deidara out of Iwa to get himself back to Konoha. He had spied for a while, trying to see what there would have been left for him. Had picked locks, kawarimi'd himself in to see his files, to see if there was anyone,  _anyone_ left for him. 

Rin was dead. An imperfect jinchuuriki. Kakashi killed her. Obito couldn't go home. A war, countless wars had torn his home apart. He wanted a world without wars, a world of peace, and he had to build it  _now_. 

Obito clipped straight from grief into rage. He turned back to Deidara, back into Akatsuki. Into Ame. 

Now Deidara was dead, fighting to bring about Obito's dream.  _Pein's_ dream. And Pein wanted to invade fucking Suna. 

"Tobi," Pein says, calling his attention. "You've observed the fighting styles of the jinchuuriki and of this Sakura. Tell us what you know."

Obito sucks his teeth when the eyes in the room land on him. He blows a hard breath through his nostrils and loosens his grip on his own hands. 

"The Yonbi's jinchuuriki uses the yōton. Raiton and suiton are your best bet against it. He's a taijutsu specialist as well. The Gobi jinchuuriki uses futton. Doton and suiton against him. He relies on taijutsu, and his futton supplements his attacks. Boils his chakra hotter, makes him stronger."

He goes on. For the Rokubi, the Nanabi, and the Hachibi. The only one he doesn't have information on is the Kyuubi, and that's because the kid's been so damn difficult to find after Itachi and Kisame showed their damn faces to scare Sasuke further into his fratricidal bloodlust. 

"And the girl?" Pein asks. 

Obito cracks his knuckles against his own hands. The little releases in pressure don't do much to stead him. 

"A medic," he says. "She summons slugs, has them hold onto her body. They give her extra skills. If you knock the slugs off her, she'll probably lose the skill."

The information makes Itachi raise a brow. Obito sneers at him. That's what he got for losing his partner to that damn kid's Kiri insurrection. Itachi was such a godforsaken knowitall that even having a little bit of information to lord over his head made the kid look like he was constipated. 

In another life, this might have been good natured teasing between cousins. In this one, Itachi's face smooths back into neutrality and Obito faces the leader of Akatsuki once more. 

"After Kakuzu and Hidan obtain the Nanabi, we will prepare an onslaught on Sunagakure."

Hidan lets out a low whistle. Konan's face pinches into unhappiness. It's uncharacteristically emotional for her. 

"The Nanabi," Pein explains, "is the strongest yet of the bijuu we have captured. Once we obtain it, it will be easy for us to take the remaining jinchuuriki that are within Suna's walls."

"All at once?" Kakuzu asks. "Do we have the forces?" 

The answering press of malevolent chakra answers Kakuzu's question. It's a heavy weight, one that threatens the proud line of Obito's shoulders. It's the kind of chakra that demands submission, that demands the open line of the throat or the curve of an unprotected belly. 

They rarely forgot themselves and challenged Pein. It was unspoken that he was the strongest of them. No one with eyes like that, with a chakra so severe was anything less than predatory. 

Hidan juts out his jaw in defiance, but even that is cowed. Kakuzu closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose to supposedly stave off a headache. Itachi holds himself more rigidly than he had before. Konan doesn't do so much as grimace. 

"You see to your work," Pein says, "and I will see to mine." 

Obito wants to bare his teeth and snarl. As it is, he can barely keep his head up on his shoulders. 

"Once the Nanabi is secured, we will move forward," he continues. "Until then, see to your smaller assignments. Prepare yourselves."

Then, as quickly as it had laid itself over them, Pein's chakra is sucked back into himself, tightly controlled, a cowl of vicious energy. Hidan smacks his lips, grinning as he vaults himself to his feet. He spins his scythe over and under his arm, yapping at Kakuzu as he strolls out of the room. 

Itachi follows at a sedate pace and Obito gets to his feet. He's surprised when Konan makes it out of the room before he does. She's usually the last to go. Obito realizes why when he looks back over his shoulder, one last glance before he exits himself. 

Flanking Pein are five figures, all orange haired, all wearing Akatsuki cloaks. The fact that he hadn't noticed them until now makes the hair on Obito's arms stand at stark attention. 

Only Pein notices that he has stopped, has seen what the others missed by leaving. Then, slowly, five more pairs of eerie purple eyes watch him as he hastens out of the room. 

There were more members in Akatsuki than Obito thought. He doesn't like the fact that he's only just found out. 


End file.
